Erin Norman is the Lee Family Fellow and Senior Director of Communications Strategies at State Policy Network
In 2022, The Economist ran an opinion piece comparing the expected length of Liz Truss’ term as British Prime Minister to the shelf life of a head of lettuce. The lettuce won after Truss lasted just 49 days in office, setting a record for the shortest tenure in UK history.
In politics, a joke like that is going to reappear as soon as it can and the growing calls for President Biden to step out of the race produced the chance. Polymarket, the decentralized prediction market that has taken off in the last year since raising $70 million in venture capital, debuted Lettuce vs. Biden – Who lasts longer? on July 18, starting a 10-day clock. As we know, Lettuce officially took the title on July 21, after more than $107,000 in bets had been placed.
At its height, Lettuce had a 78 percent chance of outlasting Biden on Friday morning, which was clearly the day many expected a withdrawal announcement. However, as the summer Friday drew to a close with no word from the Biden campaign, the likelihood of the lettuce outlasting Biden fell to just 36%. The Sunday afternoon announcement of Biden leaving the race came as somewhat of a surprise, but only in timing.
Not everyone knows the intricacies of the Georgetown party scene, can recognize their state lawmakers, or follows policy as it goes through the legislative process. But they do read the news, talk with friends, and sense patterns. And while you won’t get a lot of their gut feelings on X or in mainstream media op-eds, the general feeling of the country does play out in pop culture.
Polymarket is an especially interesting manifestation of this because it gives people the opportunity to make money on their knowledge. Research has shown this aggregation of general public knowledge beats polls and pundits, on average. The site bills itself as “the future of news,” or the next step in the power of crowd sourcing information. Particularly in politics, many people with inside knowledge may not publicly talk about what they know but will certainly take the opportunity to anonymously make some money off it. The incentives are ripe for quality intel.
Hollywood is another place to look for clues on which way the nation is trending. While the entertainment industry definitely leans to the left, it is first and foremost a business, uninterested in losing money or eyeballs. America went through a turbulent period in race relations in the 1960s and 1970s, but in 1975, the entertainment industry believed things had cooled enough to launch The Jeffersons, a show about a wealthy black couple. The show was a critical success, with high ratings and 14 Emmy Award nominations over its run. The country had cooled on race enough to make dialogue like the kind The Jeffersons created possible.
Not all of Hollywood’s gambles pay off but they can still tell us a great deal about where the country stands. When Ellen DeGeneres came out as gay in 1997 on her sitcom Ellen, attitudes on homosexuality had liberalized significantly. Still, the show lost advertisers and some local affiliates refused to air the episode at all. Despite the loss in ad revenue, the network declined to run ads from two LGBT-oriented groups, making clear what they felt their audience would tolerate. The show was cancelled after the first full season of Ellen’s character being out as a lesbian. America was not yet ready for an openly gay protagonist.
All jokes aside, those working to advance policy need to expand where they pull insights from in an era where information and opinions from millions circle constantly. Market research, polling, and expert analysis are important parts of the equation but so is tapping into other less formal sources, including pop culture. There is a grain of truth in every joke.
