Joan Didion wrote an article in the 1980's titled "Insider Baseball" who made an analogy between reporting on elections and reporting on the going-on in baseball locker rooms. Typical election journalism gives the ready the illusion that they're getting an inside view, but ultimately the voter is disenfranchised because the story isn't about the voter's choice, it's about the campaigns.
I remember an Issac Asimov story about a future where only one person had to vote, because, based on that person's vote, a supercomputer could predict who would have won the election. That's the strange future of 538. Politics is no longer the art of the possible, it's just like betting on sports.
Elections already are about the campaigns. If there is more certainty about the outcome of the election, they will inevitably be less about the campaigns. That would lower turnout... but would it be bad?
I think Paul's point was that typical election coverage is about the campaigns themselves, as if the campaign was intrinsically important [1]. But the campaign is not what's relevant to a voter. That is, they don't need a narrative about how the campaign is doing, they need information on their choices.
[1] Insider campaign coverage is certainly interesting, but that's different from being important. I'm interested in behind-the-scenes narratives in just about everything.
I remember an Issac Asimov story about a future where only one person had to vote, because, based on that person's vote, a supercomputer could predict who would have won the election. That's the strange future of 538. Politics is no longer the art of the possible, it's just like betting on sports.