re: #182 Interesting Times

To piggyback off of Hecuba’s Daugther’s reply, in this “life comes at you fast” age, info released “early” in October risks being entirely forgotten/drowned out by election day (hell…the infamous “pussy grab” tape was released early October, and fat lot of good it did keeping Cheeto Benito out of the White House). Don’t we always make “I’m so old I remember” jokes about events that happened only days or even hours ago?

So yes…while what you said may have been true for election years of old, nowadays, releasing damaging info 10 days before an election (especially a close race with many undecideds) might very well be the sweet spot.

We’ll never know entirely for sure but Nate Silver believes it cost a couple of points.