A list of the things that could break election models

Voter suppression, a check-shaped recovery and a giant meteor are all things I’m worried about (to varying degrees...)

A half-rant, half-blog post for you today:

I’ve notice this tendency for Very Online People to object to election models because they “don’t factor in voter suppression and Russian interference.” I get the spirit of the objection and can make some (slightly informed) guesses about where it’s coming from in the Very Online Twitter Brain, I think.

My theory goes like this: 2016 was a big surprise for lots of people. For many online and on the left, the idea that enough Americans would vote for Donald Trump to put him in the White House was a huge break from their lived experiences and expectations for their fellow citizen. Such a worldview-shattering event has caused them to look out for information that may have led them astray. Polls are an easy boogeyman (boogey…Data??) so get a lot of blame that could be spent on revisiting our own thinking.

Well, to be fair, polls were wrong in a few key states. And they were more wrong there than average. But they weren’t earth-shatteringly wrong. T…