Biases in political journalism and election forecasting

An aggressive pursuit of centrism will blind us to truths otherwise evident in the data

A brief aside: I assure you that this is a post about political journalism and forecasting, but I must begin with the ideological. Forgive me.

I am not a political moderate. That much should be evident from many of my tweets and other newsletter dispatches. Fundamentally, I think that center-left policies and mixed-market economics usually solve our collective problems more than individualists and proponents of center-right small government like to admit. And more recently I have also taken up the belief that the political right in America is more predisposed to fascist tendencies (and specifically here I use “fascism” to mean the oftentimes violent politics of “us-versus-them”) than those on the left. I think ethnonationalism and militarism are bad—seeing that these are more common on the right, I am opposed to most of the candidates who associate themselves with America’s current Republican Party.

I am lucky to have a job where I can be open about these beliefs. Especially in the “mai…