And things that help them in the previous rounds (talking like a SJW, to put it bluntly) seem to hurt them in the final round, and vice versa.
I think this is false. Shor, from the transcript:
But we went and we tested these things [e.g. talking about how good slavery reparations would be]. It turns out these unpopular issues were also bad in the primary. The median primary voter is like 58 years old. Probably the modal primary voter is a 58-year-old black woman. And they’re not super interested in a lot of these radical sweeping policies that are out there. And so the question was, “Why was this happening?” I think the answer was that there was this pipeline of pushing out something that was controversial and getting a ton of attention on Twitter. The people who work at news stations—because old people watch a lot of TV—read Twitter, because the people who run MSNBC are all 28-year-olds. And then that leads to bookings.
I don’t have much to say about your take, but it was interesting!
I think this is false. Shor, from the transcript:
I don’t have much to say about your take, but it was interesting!
You’re right, the main difference is not between the primaries and the final round, but rather somewhere between Twitter/journalists and primaries.