Through his previous work at FiveThirtyEight and The New York Times and his current newsletter, Silver Bulletin, Nate Silver has been a keen, even obsessive observer of politics, well known for his application of quantitative methods to assess potential election outcomes. As a professional poker player, he has also been fascinated by risk and by risk-takers. In a new guest essay, we at Times Opinion asked him to combine those passions and take a look at the twists and turns of the 2024 presidential race through the lens of risk-taking. Above all, he was struck by a surprising development: The biggest risk of the race so far — the Democrats' switch of candidates from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris — came from what was previously the more risk-averse player. Silver has a new book out, "On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything," and it outlines two camps of elites and their relationships to risk. One he dubs the risk-taking River (think Silicon Valley, Wall Street, sports betting, crypto) and the other the risk-averse Village (the East Coast technocratic expert class in government and other institutions, mainstream media, academia). In his reckoning, the Village is more or less Democratic. But by making the move at the head of their ticket, as Silver writes, Democrats "roughly doubled their chances of winning, from Mr. Biden's 27 percent chance in my election forecast model at the time he withdrew from the race to Ms. Harris's 54 percent the week of the Democratic National Convention." If the convention is a success, Silver notes that Harris may emerge as a perceived front-runner — which could bring new pitfalls and risks to manage, like complacency. So far, he writes, she has "defied the Village stereotype by acting cool under pressure." From Silver, it is a high compliment. His book lays out what he sees as the 13 habits of highly successful risk-takers. No. 1 on that list: "cool under pressure." Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Opinion Today: Would you play poker against Kamala Harris?
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