These two conditions are sufficient:
(1) When the race is close or
(2) When the prize is big.
Federer can afford to relax in a match with small stakes or when he is close to the winning point. But he should work hard at Wimdledon and if the match is tied. The same principles apply in elections. In the Massachusetts special election, it has been known for months that the second condition is satisfied. Because, without the Massachusetts Senate seat, the 60 vote barrier needed to fight the filibuster is gone. The White House, the Democratic Party etc should have been focused on the Massachusetts race on this ground alone. Belatedly, it was discovered that condition (1) also obtained. But even you didn’t know that, you did know that the coalition you had to hold together to get stuff through the Senate was pretty fragile and one crack was enough to send the whole thing flying.
The Republican Party recognized that the second condition was key, worked like crazy and played the optimal strategy. It’s common sense but only one party seemed to get it.
Cheap Talk 
10 comments
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January 19, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Anon
I think you mean ‘or’, not ‘and’, between 1 and 2, right?
January 19, 2010 at 11:23 pm
one thing I learned
Yes, I believe you mean either is sufficient. You wording is unclear, my dear.
January 20, 2010 at 5:46 am
sandeep
Thx! You are both right. You can only be so precise watching Fox/MSNBC and blogging at the same time.
January 20, 2010 at 9:16 am
Alicia
The only problem I see with this analysis is it assumes political parties and politicians behave like rational actors.
January 20, 2010 at 11:41 am
Mort Dubois
Many of your analyses strain credibility but this one takes the cake. You are entirely omitting the fact that voters, not parties, decide elections, and that they act independently of the campaign. It’s entirely possible that the campaign run by the Democrats was brilliant and that run by the Republicans was incompetent and the electorate had already decided how to vote based on other factors (like what they had seen in the last year).
January 21, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Jim
Do you have a blog, Mort? I would love to read your analyses.
January 20, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Tim Randall
Finally, the end of that long period of inter-party co-operation that we were all dreading so much when the presidential election results were announced.
@Mort: If voters acted independently of campaigns, election expenses would be a waste of effort. Have political parties around the world failed to notice this?
January 20, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Mort Dubois
Election expenditures are proportional to willing donors. Only some donors are voters. Examine the campaigns of John Connelly, Phil Gramm, Steve Forbes, and any of the other legion of big spenders who didn’t impress the voters. Or William Proxmire, who spent little and won big. It’s impossible to tell whether campaigns are successful because of expenditures or despite them.
Mort
January 20, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Sean
In distance running and cycling, participants frequently run in a pack/pelaton for long stretches even in the biggest races. So the two conditions are not even jointly sufficient.
January 21, 2010 at 10:04 pm
sandeep
I was thinking of models of R&D races. You’re thinking of some broader class of games with a cooperative element. Might be interesting to work out something like that.