I’m interested in the probability. Sorry for giving the impression I wanted a yes or no answer; I’ve edited the title accordingly.
ETA: Another way of putting my question is: How many eligible Americans are there who, if they magically ended up running against the current president in a 1v1 race, would win? Is it zero? Is it ten thousand? Is it a million? Ten million?
My guess is about a thousand, mostly because if you have a ‘strange general election’ where you have two Rs or two Ds then Biden and Trump both are highly polarizing without being highly unifying, and Biden has the economy as an albatross around his neck right now, so I’d expect—if the other candidate was reasonable—them to lose the other party and still lose some of their own party, which lets otherwise much worse candidates have a chance. But we’re still talking about e.g. 900 politicians and 100 business people and maybe a handful of very famous celebrities. and that’s it.
Technical note: Most of the time that Biden or Trump loses it is because they literally died during the month of campaigning, or had a huge health issue where they are obviously no longer able to serve. It’s not that unlikely.
Wow. Yeah, as Charlie pointed out I basically asked the wrong question given what I’m interested in; it should have been something like “how many Americans are there who would have a >40% chance of winning were they to be selected.” Thanks for the answer. I find your answer … well, on the one hand it seems plausible for the reasons you mention + efficient-market style intuitions. But on the other hand… I get the sense that there are millions of Americans who are generally well liked by a majority of people on both sides of the aisle (or would be if they were more famous), and also very smart/impressive/competent etc. And I get the impression that Trump (and to some extent Biden) are hated by half the country. So this makes me feel like the answer should be “millions.”
Being well-liked is not the same thing as being a good candidate. People will not vote for someone who is not either a professional politician or someone who is famous in a relevant profession (such as lawyer or finance).
My theory is that being a politician in the way that presidents have to be is genuinely extremely difficult. Of course they make gaffs and make stupid mistakes, but that’s because they have the difficulty level set to “stupidly insane”. And that most people that are in those roles would actually seem much more impressive if you swapped them with the millions of americans you’re talking about.
There’s some intuitiveness about this: Look at any modern day campaign trail — it’s public speaking, Q&A, many flights, traveling, remembering a lot of stuff day-in and day-out while working 10-12 hour days. Very few of the most competent people I know would be able to do that at all, much less do it with the small number of gaffs that politicians actually make.
Yes. The politician wins. Focus groups and polls are clear on this, they won’t vote for random people. Trump would also beat them easily.
(Obviously some probability you get someone effectively not random from a random draw, but it’s very low.)
I’m interested in the probability. Sorry for giving the impression I wanted a yes or no answer; I’ve edited the title accordingly.
ETA: Another way of putting my question is: How many eligible Americans are there who, if they magically ended up running against the current president in a 1v1 race, would win? Is it zero? Is it ten thousand? Is it a million? Ten million?
My guess is about a thousand, mostly because if you have a ‘strange general election’ where you have two Rs or two Ds then Biden and Trump both are highly polarizing without being highly unifying, and Biden has the economy as an albatross around his neck right now, so I’d expect—if the other candidate was reasonable—them to lose the other party and still lose some of their own party, which lets otherwise much worse candidates have a chance. But we’re still talking about e.g. 900 politicians and 100 business people and maybe a handful of very famous celebrities. and that’s it.
Technical note: Most of the time that Biden or Trump loses it is because they literally died during the month of campaigning, or had a huge health issue where they are obviously no longer able to serve. It’s not that unlikely.
Wow. Yeah, as Charlie pointed out I basically asked the wrong question given what I’m interested in; it should have been something like “how many Americans are there who would have a >40% chance of winning were they to be selected.” Thanks for the answer. I find your answer … well, on the one hand it seems plausible for the reasons you mention + efficient-market style intuitions. But on the other hand… I get the sense that there are millions of Americans who are generally well liked by a majority of people on both sides of the aisle (or would be if they were more famous), and also very smart/impressive/competent etc. And I get the impression that Trump (and to some extent Biden) are hated by half the country. So this makes me feel like the answer should be “millions.”
Being well-liked is not the same thing as being a good candidate. People will not vote for someone who is not either a professional politician or someone who is famous in a relevant profession (such as lawyer or finance).
My theory is that being a politician in the way that presidents have to be is genuinely extremely difficult. Of course they make gaffs and make stupid mistakes, but that’s because they have the difficulty level set to “stupidly insane”. And that most people that are in those roles would actually seem much more impressive if you swapped them with the millions of americans you’re talking about.
There’s some intuitiveness about this: Look at any modern day campaign trail — it’s public speaking, Q&A, many flights, traveling, remembering a lot of stuff day-in and day-out while working 10-12 hour days. Very few of the most competent people I know would be able to do that at all, much less do it with the small number of gaffs that politicians actually make.