"In class, someone recounted an anecdote about only thinking Mamdani had a chance to be NYC mayor once reputable polls measured his growing support."
From the above we see that it's more than pure entertainment. The reason it grabs our attention is, we are social apes. It matters a lot whether I think that my tribe thinks that a person or idea is popular.
Since we are social apes but not eusocial apes, we've had to endlessly invent new technologies to spread information and coordinate action in groups. Polls and election forecasts are just one of these technologies -- maybe now becoming obsolete.
Beyond mere entertainment, polls sometimes function as (price) signals that shape the outcome. Common knowledge (even if logically ill-founded) that "candidate A is the electable one" sometimes influences strategic voting.
Writing from the perspective of a historian, I don't find fascination with the polls surprising at all. It is fully in line with the psychological view of the brain as a prediction machine. There's a fairly lengthy treatment of the topic copied from Google AI below.
Abraham Lincoln was intensely focused on the probabilities regarding elections during his presidency.
Even before there were elections, there was already a complete fascination with the topic of possible changes in government. How long was Henry VII's new queen going to last? Who was likely to get the next major appointment in the government? How was the King's health and how was the health of his heirs?
To summarize, to chart one's course in the present optimally, one must anticipate the future.
The concept of the brain as a "prediction machine" belongs to a paradigm-shifting framework in cognitive science and psychology known as predictive processing (or predictive coding).
Instead of viewing the human brain as a passive organ that sits in the dark waiting for sensory data to flood in from the outside world, this framework proves that the brain is constantly generating top-down expectations to actively construct our reality milliseconds ahead of our actual awareness.
How Predictive Processing Works
Traditionally, psychology relied on a "bottom-up" model: your eyes and ears take in raw data, send it up to the brain, and the brain pieces it together like a puzzle to perceive reality.
Predictive processing flips this entirely "top-down":
• The Internal Model: Your brain creates a running simulation of the world based on your past experiences, memories, and deeply held beliefs.
• The Continuous Guess: It uses this model to constantly "autocomplete" what you are about to see, hear, taste, or feel next.
• Prediction Errors: Your actual sensory organs act less like video cameras and more like auditors. They only send data back up to the brain if there is a mismatch—a prediction error. If you expect to hear a bird but a branch snaps, your brain experiences an error, alerts your focus, and updates its model.
Why the Brain Predicts
According to pioneers in the field like neuroscientist Anil Seth and theoretician Karl Friston, the primary driver is metabolic efficiency. Processing every single raw detail of your environment in real time requires an enormous amount of caloric energy. By filtering out the predictable details and only focusing on "surprises," the brain saves vital resources and responds to danger much faster.
Very fascinating topic. Horse-race journalism seems pretty bad, but I can't deny how entertaining it is, especially with the double whammy of feeling some kind of comfort over an uncertain future where the stakes feel high.
Perhaps forecasts could solve the problem of civil engagement by always assigning an equal chance to all parties to maximize perceived agency :P
"In class, someone recounted an anecdote about only thinking Mamdani had a chance to be NYC mayor once reputable polls measured his growing support."
From the above we see that it's more than pure entertainment. The reason it grabs our attention is, we are social apes. It matters a lot whether I think that my tribe thinks that a person or idea is popular.
Since we are social apes but not eusocial apes, we've had to endlessly invent new technologies to spread information and coordinate action in groups. Polls and election forecasts are just one of these technologies -- maybe now becoming obsolete.
Beyond mere entertainment, polls sometimes function as (price) signals that shape the outcome. Common knowledge (even if logically ill-founded) that "candidate A is the electable one" sometimes influences strategic voting.
Writing from the perspective of a historian, I don't find fascination with the polls surprising at all. It is fully in line with the psychological view of the brain as a prediction machine. There's a fairly lengthy treatment of the topic copied from Google AI below.
Abraham Lincoln was intensely focused on the probabilities regarding elections during his presidency.
Even before there were elections, there was already a complete fascination with the topic of possible changes in government. How long was Henry VII's new queen going to last? Who was likely to get the next major appointment in the government? How was the King's health and how was the health of his heirs?
To summarize, to chart one's course in the present optimally, one must anticipate the future.
The concept of the brain as a "prediction machine" belongs to a paradigm-shifting framework in cognitive science and psychology known as predictive processing (or predictive coding).
Instead of viewing the human brain as a passive organ that sits in the dark waiting for sensory data to flood in from the outside world, this framework proves that the brain is constantly generating top-down expectations to actively construct our reality milliseconds ahead of our actual awareness.
How Predictive Processing Works
Traditionally, psychology relied on a "bottom-up" model: your eyes and ears take in raw data, send it up to the brain, and the brain pieces it together like a puzzle to perceive reality.
Predictive processing flips this entirely "top-down":
• The Internal Model: Your brain creates a running simulation of the world based on your past experiences, memories, and deeply held beliefs.
• The Continuous Guess: It uses this model to constantly "autocomplete" what you are about to see, hear, taste, or feel next.
• Prediction Errors: Your actual sensory organs act less like video cameras and more like auditors. They only send data back up to the brain if there is a mismatch—a prediction error. If you expect to hear a bird but a branch snaps, your brain experiences an error, alerts your focus, and updates its model.
Why the Brain Predicts
According to pioneers in the field like neuroscientist Anil Seth and theoretician Karl Friston, the primary driver is metabolic efficiency. Processing every single raw detail of your environment in real time requires an enormous amount of caloric energy. By filtering out the predictable details and only focusing on "surprises," the brain saves vital resources and responds to danger much faster.
And yet it seems possible that Janet Mills was driven out of the Maine senate race by fake polls that caused volunteers and donors to drop her
Very fascinating topic. Horse-race journalism seems pretty bad, but I can't deny how entertaining it is, especially with the double whammy of feeling some kind of comfort over an uncertain future where the stakes feel high.
Perhaps forecasts could solve the problem of civil engagement by always assigning an equal chance to all parties to maximize perceived agency :P