We are now officially less than two weeks away from the election to determine who will be the next President of the United States, either incumbent Barack H. Obama (D) or challenger Willard “Mitt” Romney (R).
This thread is for posters to give their predictions of the election, and nothing more. It is not a place to discuss the election in general, there’s a megathread for that. It’s likewise not to discuss the horse race in statistical terms, there’s a thread for that.
It’s not to discuss the merits or flaws in either candidate’s position, there’s a lot of threads for that.
This is solely a competition to determine who will most accurately predict the results of the election. ANY discussion that is not on topic will be reported, let’s keep this thread clean for the participants, and the judges.
Here’s how it works. Every one of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, has an amount of electoral votes equal to the total number of representatives that state has in the United States Congress. Whatever candidate receives the most votes in each state’s popular vote, will win the electoral votes for that state (exceptions are Maine and Nebraska which can split votes) There are a total of 538 electoral votes. Whatever candidate receives 270 or more votes will win the election. This voting assumes no “faithless electors”, and if a candidate wins a state, he will receive all electoral votes for that state, unless the state allows for split votes.
In the event of an electoral college tie (269 votes each, a mathematical possibility), the President will be determined by the US House of Representatives.
Conventional wisdom agrees, based on polling, that some states are “safe Obama” and some states are “safe Romney”, meaning that they are extremely likely (90%+ chance) to go to that particular candidate. There are also 11 “swing” states which, while potentially leaning towards one way or another, the belief is that the margin is small enough that it could be “swung” one way or the other..
OBAMA STATES (201 total electoral votes):
ROMNEY STATES (191 total electoral votes)
SWING STATES (146 total electoral votes)
So, here are the rules. Failure to abide by the rules will result in disqualification and make you ineligible to win the contest.
1) Your post must contain a final vote total, and a complete breakdown of all electoral college votes, or be written in such a way so that the reader can easily discern who you believe will be given every vote. Therefore, if you believe conventional wisdom, you can simply say that you believe Obama will win the “Obama states”, and save time and space, same with Romney. You don’t have to list everything, but write it in such a way where every vote can be inferred. For example:
“Romney wins the Romney States plus Florida and North Carolina. Obama wins the rest Obama: 303, Romney: 235”
Is fine, since it clearly explains the breakdown of every state, all states designated “Romney safe” and North Carolina + Florida, the balance to Obama.
2) One post per poster. You are allowed only one post with a prediction, that is the post that will be used, if you post multiple times, only your first post will be used in determining the winner
3) No entries or edits after 11:59 PM EST 11/02/12. This is about who is best at predicting, not who can get the last post in before the news calls the winner. Any entry after 11:59 PM EST 11/02/12 will not be considered, but of course you can still post if you want, you just can’t win. Likewise you can edit your initial post as much as you want, but not after that time. Any posts showing an edit timestamp after that time will be disqualified.
4) The winner of this contest will be determined in the following fashion:
- the poster who accurately predicted the race results will be the winner of the contest. Meaning the poster who correctly predicted the outcome of every state, plus the District of Columbia.
- In the event that no poster accurately predicts the election entirely, the winner of this contest will be the one who accurately predicts the electoral college spread, but does not fully predict the states that accompany it.
- In the event that no poster accurately predicts the electoral college votes, the winner of this contest will be the one who accurately predicts the winner of the election, and comes closest to the actual electoral college vote for the winning candidate, without the prediction exceeding the actual results.
- In the event that no poster accurately predicted the winner of the election, without predicting an excessive number of electoral college votes for the winner of the election, the winner of this contest will be the one who accurately predicted the winner of the election, and whose prediction came closest to the actual electoral college votes received by the winner of the election. In the event of an electoral college tie, the winner of the election will, for the purposes of this contest, be presumed to be the individual whose party wins the majority of the seats in the House of Representatives.
- In the event that no poster accurately predicted the winner, we all lose because, seriously somebody has to vote for Romney.
6) In the event of any tie, based on the winning criteria, the winner of this contest will be determined based on who posted first (if the post has been edited, the edit time will be considered the time of posting)
Ready? BEGIN!
