# "Gears for political races" by Tom Smith

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401/gears-for-political-races-by-tom-smith
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401/gears-for-political-races-by-tom-smith.md
Podcast: [LessWrong (Curated & Popular)](https://stenobird.com/podcast/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401)
Published: 2026-06-19T02:15:41+00:00
Episode link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2037297/episodes/19370178-gears-for-political-races-by-tom-smith.mp3
Audio file: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2037297/episodes/19370178-gears-for-political-races-by-tom-smith.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/lesswrong-curated-popular-5643401/episodes/gears-for-political-races-by-tom-smith
Duration seconds: 1421

## Resource

In the past few years, many people around me have tried to convince me that US electoral politics is important. But like many other people in the community, I’ve been suspicious of many of the high-level arguments that I’ve heard. It felt like people were pulling numbers out of poorly-documented models I didn’t have time to examine and citing studies I didn’t have time to read. But I lacked a gears-level model of why and how individual efforts could impact electoral outcomes, and I felt inti...

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## Transcript

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