[NOTE: In addition to entering the contest, please bookmark my Liveblog, Livechat & Live Results page, then come back Tuesday for election results and contest results!]
With less than three weeks until the presidential election, the polls are open for my quadrennial blog contest to see who can best predict the Electoral College outcomes! It’s time to start playing with the red & blue map, like Loyette and Loyacita:
In 2004, Mike Wiser had a perfect map; in 2008, Kevin Curran missed only Missouri, edging out the competition because he correctly predicted Obama’s surprise win in Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district.
Who will join Wiser and Curran and earn eternal glory (and possibly a CafePress mug of your electoral map) this year? Will it be you?
Click here to enter the contest!
The entry deadline is Election Eve — Monday, November 5 — at 7:00 PM Mountain Time (9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific). Feel free to enter early, and then re-enter later if you change your mind; I will assume that the last entry I receive is the final one, and will discard any earlier entries, unless you tell me otherwise. If you have any questions, or just want to make a minor change to your entry, e-mail me at irishtrojan [at] gmail.com.
Contest Rules:
* Each contestants will receive between 0 and 538 points, depending on how close they come to a “perfect map.” For each correctly-predicted state/district, the contestant receives as many points as the state/district has electoral votes. So, for instance, it’s better to get both Iowa (6) and Nevada (6) wrong, and everything else right, than to get just Ohio (18) wrong. The map that missed only IA & NV would get 526 points; the map that missed only OH, 520.
* I will abide by the final popular-vote result in each state/district as certified by the relevant governing authority in that jurisdiction; “faithless electors” will not be taken into account. A winner will be declared as soon as the state-by-state election results are sufficiently complete that such a declaration is possible, whether that’s on election night or weeks later. I will use my best judgment to fairly determine the operative winner for contest purposes in the event of any disputed state results.
* There is no requirement that the contest winner must necessarily have predicted the correct overall winner in the election (although that is a tiebreaker, as you’ll see). The object of the game is to predict each state correctly. If you only get, say, New Hampshire wrong, even if that one error happens to change the national winner, you’ll still beat someone who had the right national winner but picked Florida wrong, for instance.
* Tiebreakers are similar to, but slightly different from, last time around. They are as follows, in order:
1. In the event of a tie in points, a contestant who correctly predicts the overall national electoral vote winner (again, going by the popular-vote results in each state, ignoring “faithless electors”) prevails over a contestant who predicts the wrong national winner. NOTE: For purposes of this rule, a 269-269 map is regarded as predicting an Romney victory, and a 269-269 result is considered a Romney victory (because the Republicans have a mortal lock on a majority of the House delegations in more than 25 states, so Romney would become president in any 269-269 scenario, unless a number of House Republicans defect and vote for Obama, which seems inconceivable to me).
2. Among still-tied contestants, whoever gets the fewest number of states wrong prevails. So, for instance, all other things being equal, it’s better to get Wisconsin wrong (10 EVs) than to get both Iowa (6) and New Hampshire (4) wrong. For purposes of this rule, the District of Columbia counts as a “state.” As for Maine and Nebraska, if a contestant gets the at-large result right, but a congressional district or two wrong — or vice-versa — this will be counted as a “half-state” wrong.
3. Among still-tied contestants, whoever comes closer, in absolute value terms, to predicting President Obama’s electoral vote total prevails. This rule rewards “offsetting” errors when two maps otherwise contain the same number of mistakes. So, for instance, suppose Obama wins Iowa (6) and Wisconsin (10), but Romney wins Nevada (6). Now support Map #1 gets Iowa and Wisconsin wrong, giving Romney both states. Map #2 gets Wisconsin wrong, giving it to Romney, and also gets Nevada wrong, giving it to Obama. Both maps are off by 16 EVs, and by 2 states. But Map #1 gives Obama 16 fewer electoral votes than he actually received, while Map #2 comes within 4 electoral votes of Obama’s actual total. Map #2 therefore wins this tiebreaker.
4. Among still-tied contestants, whoever comes closer, in absolute value terms, to predicting how many Senate seats the Republicans will win, prevails. The result will be based on election results only; any post-election party switches (or surprise Angus King caucusing decisions) will not be considered.
5. Among still-tied contestants, whoever comes closer, in absolute value terms, to predicting how many House seats the Republicans will win, prevails. Again, the result will be based on election results only; any post-election party switches will not be considered.
6. Among still-tied contestants, anyone who correctly predicted the state with the closest popular-vote margin (in percentage terms) defeats anyone who failed to do so.
7. Among still-tied contestants, whoever comes closer, in absolute value terms, to predicting Obama’s national popular-vote margin of victory/defeat, prevails. (All Romney & Obama popular-vote predictions are rounded to the nearest tenth of percent.)
8. Among still-tied contestants, whoever comes closer, in absolute value terms, to predicting Gary Johnson’s national popular-vote total, prevails. (All Johnson popular-vote predictions are rounded to the nearest hundredth of percent.)
9. Among still-tied contestants, whoever comes closer, in absolute value terms, to predicting Obama’s raw vote total in Colorado, prevails. (Contestants are encouraged to give an exact total, down to the individual vote, in order to prevent ties.)
10. In the unlikely event that a tie remains, whoever entered the contest earlier, prevails. (Any changes to one’s prediction resets their prediction time to the date and time of the last change.)
Again, click here to enter! And then check back here, and on my Twitter feed, for contest results on Election Night. [UPDATE: Liveblog link!]
Good luck!
P.S. A big hat tip to Unlikely Voter, whose nifty, easy-to-use, Maine-and-Nebraska-including, informative-URL-encoding electoral prediction map I used to power my contest.