So you’re criticizing Capla’s interest in models of electoral dynamics because politicians don’t do it. That misses the point: electoral dynamics are mathematically explicable. They don’t cause electoral outcomes, so an in-depth understanding of them is of limited value to candidates themselves. But trusting the explanations of the politicians as to why they won an election is a genuinely terrible approach to understanding anything but the politician’s own beliefs.
The campaigns of candidates employ political consultants many of whom are statisticians of the Nate Silver kind. All high-level campaigns do a lot of data mining and analysis.
The point is that elected officials are the experts at politics. If they have no use for knowing the math, then the math is not central.
So you’re criticizing Capla’s interest in models of electoral dynamics because politicians don’t do it. That misses the point: electoral dynamics are mathematically explicable. They don’t cause electoral outcomes, so an in-depth understanding of them is of limited value to candidates themselves. But trusting the explanations of the politicians as to why they won an election is a genuinely terrible approach to understanding anything but the politician’s own beliefs.
The campaigns of candidates employ political consultants many of whom are statisticians of the Nate Silver kind. All high-level campaigns do a lot of data mining and analysis.
I don’t deny that there’s polling and trying to predict the effect of political messaging based on statistical models.
On the other hand running a campaign and doing public policy are two different things.
*I would also note that I don’t live in the US but in Germany, and we don’t have exactly the same political system.