2021 Recap: What I Got Wrong, Right, And Lessons For 2022

Pundit Accountability

I can’t remember who I stole this idea from, but I’m gonna do a little pundit accountability for myself after a year of takes, talk through calls (right and wrong) I made, and talk a little about 2022. But, you’re not here for the preamble, you’re here for the self-flagellation, so let’s go.

What I Got Wrong

Virginia

We’ll start with the worst call of the year and work backwards, with my clear, confident, definitive take that Democrats would win the Virginia Governorship, and even do so by more than a few points. I don’t need to defend this, it was crap. I thought the Generic Ballot polls were the “right” signal, and that in an environment where not much had changed, Democrats would win comfortably. Turns out, the Generic Ballot polling that assessment was based on was shit, and Biden’s crap approvals were the correct signal. (Not using state polling was and is a decision I’m perfectly fine with, even though here it was good.)

Like, I looked at the lessons of 2020 and made a call. That call – that partisanship is increasingly important in state races, and that polling errors are almost always in the direction of the party who usually wins that state – I think is correct, and I will maintain it moving forward, even if Democrats get weird, anomalously good polling in, say, Florida or Ohio next year. What I got wrong was the national environment, because had I accepted Biden’s approvals as the right metric, I would have understood Virginia was going to be close. That said, I was never going to think Youngkin was going to win, so who the hell knows.

(Almost) All Of My 2022 Optimism

So, this hasn’t yet been proven wrong, but I’m ditched my optimism we have much hope of winning the House, and I think I was recklessly moronic for my take, even if Biden gets more popular and even if, somehow, we win the House again. I thought voters were more locked in than they were, and that Biden wouldn’t succumb to the usual pattern of unpopularity, and I also got the notion that GOP turnout declines were inevitable wrong (as Virginia showed). I was over-extrapolating from a pair of elections (Georgia and California), and I overread their clues.

Joe Manchin

I thought he was a persuadable asshole with cranky views. Turns out he’s just an asshole with cranky views. (This is also why I mostly don’t do policy prognostication.)

Things I Got Right

Canada

Oh boy was that campaign fun* for me. (Read: deeply, deeply unfun.)

Throughout the entirety of the Canadian campaign, I was a clarion voice that Justin Trudeau and his Liberals were fine, even as the commentariat freaked the fuck out and as Chucklefuck McGee PJ Fournier had the Tories ahead. My final projection was deeply impressive, with 314 correct calls beating Maclean’s in-house psephologist and getting the contours of the right – Liberals gaining a handful of seats, Tories losing seats – correct. I’ll take that any day.

In terms of the commentary, I knew the polls were shit and they were. It wasn’t the ads or the campaign strategy, the Tories were never winning and the polls were always wrong. It was a mirage, a function of everyone being burnt out and on the go. I knew it, and I wrote it the way this site should always be, an honest reflection of where my head is at any given moment. “If I’m wrong, there’s little reason anyone should take what I say with much seriousness. But if I am too cowardly to say in public what I say and believe in private, then nobody should give a damn what I have to say anyways.” I wrote what I thought because to do anything else would have been to invalidate my entire purpose in writing. Hopefully you were calmed by it.

California

I never thought Gavin Newsom was in trouble and turns out he never was. I don’t really want to pretend this was some impressive call, but hey, some people (hi Nate Silver, if you’re reading this) thought Newsom was in legit peril, and he never was, so it gets a mention.

Andrew Cuomo

I called the Cuomo stuff pretty well this year, between knowing he would keep on as long as possible when the initial slew of stories broke in the winter to calling him to resign in one of my first columns for TheLines this summer. He’s a scumbag, and being right about that also helps, but being able to read where the Cuomo story stood was something I’m pretty proud of.

Betting Content/TheLines Work

Got Hartlepool right when I touted that as a Tory gain the day the byelection was set, got Eric Adams to win the Mayoralty of NYC right when Yang was still favoured, Shontel Brown is now in Congress, and the Canadian and German elections were profit centres for bettors.

Virginia, Buffalo, and Rahm Emanuel to be ambassador to Japan were the main losses, but honestly, you’ll get some right and you’ll get some wrong in the betting world. If you’ve been betting with me, you’re making money.

Lessons For 2022

This is the interesting thing – I’m not sure there are many lessons moving forward from this year in terms of process. I got the Canadian election and the California recall right by ignoring the polls and trusting fundamentals, and then in Virginia applied the California logic and got fucked. Why did Newsom match his 2018 margin and then less than two months later, TMac underran Northam by 10%? Do we have answers, cause if so, I’d love to know, but it really feels like 2021 is a year of inconsistency, and there doesn’t seem to have been any grand unified takeaways that should change how I do my job.

Maybe the answer is I just suck at US elections, but the problem with that theory is Georgia (which was essentially a 2020 prediction, and why I didn’t bring it up here) and California were both places where I saw the board very very clearly, so that’s not it, and I saw Andrew Yang for the joke he was throughout his entire Mayoral run. That’s not to defend Virginia – I got that wrong – but I just don’t know there’s some grand takeaway from Virginia that will make me systemically less wrong moving forward.

The first half of 2022 is going to be Ontario heavy, with US columns when news breaks, obviously. I’ll still be doing my political betting content at TheLines, and there might be more coming down the tracks. I’d admittedly love it if 2022 saw me get some more opportunities to write for different sites, and I’m manifesting that slightly with this sentence. Writing for TheLines has been awesome, and I’m greatly appreciative of that opportunity.

Also, if you need a last minute Christmas gift, Salvation In The Storm exists. Writing a damn novel this year is honestly a huge source of pride for me. It means the world that so many of you have bought it, and I’m so deeply appreciative of everyone who has read anything I’ve ever written for giving me the audience to where I actually felt it worth it to publish it.

2021’s been a weird fucking year, and so will 2022, probably. Barring anything huge happening, I’ll be back January 3rd with the launch of my Ontario Election content, but until then, I’m taking some time off. To good health, good times, and the 2022 we all deserve,

Evan