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Thank you. through givewell.org slash rationally speaking. Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

Today's guest is David Shore. He's a political data scientist who got his start doing analysis for the Obama campaign when he was only 20, and now does consulting for various progressive groups. I've become a big fan of

David's really insightful, evidence-based discussions of political polling and strategy,

so I reached out to him to get his thoughts on a question I'm interested in, which is

whether politicians are being rational about how to win elections.

Because, you know, I suspect, like a lot of you, I often look at politics and think, you know,

why did you choose to focus on that issue? Why did you frame your message that way?

Why did you choose to run that candidate? That seems like such a bad

call. And I wanted the take of a thoughtful insider about whether there really are good reasons

that I'm not seeing for the choices that might seem to me to be unforced errors. So that's basically

what David Shore and I talk about. We focus mostly on the Democrats in the US because that's what he has the most experience

with.

But I think a lot of the dynamics he talks about are more broadly applicable to politics and just

human psychology in general.

So here is my conversation with David Shore.

So, David, one thing I'm very interested in that I would love to hear your thoughts on is whether politicians and voters are more or less behaving rationally.

That is, like, whether their choices make sense, given their goals.

And, you know, I've read and listened to a lot of your discussion of political campaigning.

...