Published on June 18, 2026 2:39 AM GMT Crossposting this from LessWrong , with the permission of the author, Tom Smith. In the past few years, many people around me have tried to convince me that US electoral politics is important. But like many other people in the community, I’ve been suspicious of many of the high-level arguments that I’ve heard. It felt like people were pulling numbers out of poorly-documented models I didn’t have time to examine and citing studies I didn’t have time to read.