Noah Lyles won the men’s 100m final at the 2024 Olympics, despite not leading for the vast majority of the race. He took poll when it mattered.
Slowly then suddenly
Not all behaviour is linear.
The system means that number of votes isn’t enough – candidates have to win votes in the right places (as bigger states count for more seats in the Electoral College). Al Gore famously won the popular vote in 2000 with 540,000 more votes than Bush, but it was Bush who entered the White House.
The danger of car collisions isn’t linear. You’re very unlikely to die when going at less than 20 miles per hour. But at 30 miles per hour, about one in five pedestrians will not survive. And at 40 miles per hour, half will not survive.
The China playbook: go from bottom to top in a matter of years.
In the 2022/23 season, Arsenal led the table for 247 days (93% of total) but eventually lost out to Man City – who only led for 28 days (7%).
The tennis superstar won 80% of the singles matches he played, but only 54% of the individual points. Not all points are made equal.
The Conservative party was in power for 14 consecutive years from 2010 to 2024. Yet the Labour party led in two-thirds of the 4,000 opinion polls published during that time – just not when it mattered.