Posted on 11/05/2016 3:47:06 PM PDT by Peter ODonnell
CONTEST -- PREDICT THE OUTCOME OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE AND THE POPULAR VOTE
Rules
The contest has two equal sections for scoring:
1. Predict the outcome of the electoral college. Your choices are Trump, Clinton, Johnson, McMullin, other, and spoiled/invalid ballots. The total of your guesses should be 538.
2. Predict the outcome of the popular vote in percentage terms to the nearest tenth. Your answer should take the form Trump xx.x, Clinton xx.x, Johnson xx.x, McMullin x.x, Stein x.x and other x.x. Do not specify others by name, if you do, I will count them as others. If you fail to submit guesses that add up to 100%, your missing percentages will count as errors against various candidates. If your totals add up to more than 100% then they stand as presented (they could by rounding add up to perhaps 100.5%).
3. As a tiebreaker, select the most surprising Trump win state from this list, which deliberately excludes DC, NE and ME, in the order presented here. Whether you agree with my selections and their order, or not, go with this list for the contest. NE and ME are excluded because their electoral college votes can be split. Supposedly sure-bet Republican states are also not included in this list. You can list whatever states you want but only the highest ranked surprise will count for the contest. UT and GA are not really surprise wins but they are transitional to the list of sure-thing wins.
HI, MA, RI, CT, DE, NJ, MD, NY, CA, IL, WA, VT, OR, MN, WI, NM, MI, CO, VA, NV, NH, IA, NC, FL, OH, UT, GA, none of these (meaning Trump would lose them all).
Example of how to enter your tie-breaker. You don't think Trump will win any state in the list until MN. So your entry should be MN.
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FR fundraiser tie-in ... I will donate $1 for every guess that is better than mine. You will pledge to donate an amount of your choice if your guess does not finish in the top five.
Results to be announced as soon as they are confirmed. If the vote goes to the House of Reps, there will be a second phase of the contest for qualified entrants. A qualified entrant will have predicted either a tie or neither major candidate to win. This should settle most questions about who owes what to FR. There may not be five qualifiers for phase two, if not, closest non-qualifiers will be declared before that phase as finishing in whatever positions in top five.
A spoiled ballot in the electoral college will be taken as any vote that is not clearly for a qualified candidate or any abstention or any other vote that cannot be counted when the House meets. Any vote that is made in error (such as the 2004 vote for Ewards which was supposed to be for Kerry and which spelled Edwards wrong) will be a spoiled ballot for the purposes of this contest. This detail will not be known right after the election so preliminary results as announced in this thread may be edited when the votes are unsealed and announced. This would likely just shuffle the order very slightly unless there's some organized voting event that we don't find out about until January. Preliminary contest scores will not factor in spoiled ballots unless somebody makes a public declaration that they spoiled their ballot (subject to confirmation in January).
Results will be tabulated in two equal sections. Your electoral college vote is 50 points minus 0.2 for every error in votes you make. For example, if the result is Trump 279 and Clinton 259, and you said Trump 290, Clinton 230, McMullin 8, then you have a total of 48 errors and that translates to 9.6 points so you get 40.4 points.
The popular vote segment also counts for 50 points and your points are reduced by 0.2 for every 1% error you have. If you only specify Trump and Clinton then whatever votes Johnson, Stein, McMullin and all others get will count against you, so predict them too. Here's an easy example of how this section scores. If you say Trump 50, Clinton 42, Johnson 5, Stein 2, McMullin 1 and others 0, and the result is Trump 51, Clinton 40, Johnson 6, Stein 2 and McMullin 0.5, others 0.5, then your total error is 5.0 and you lose 1.0 and get 49.0 points.
Contest will be declared whenever it seems reasonable that the outcome is certain. Contest winner is person with highest total of points in the two sections, ties broken by "most surprising Trump state" tie-breaker. Ties that persist beyond that are decided first by electoral college points and second by time of entry. This means there can be no ties at the end of the contest.
Good luck.
My entry is
ELECTORAL COLLEGE
Trump 290 Clinton 247 spoiled ballot 1
POPULAR VOTE
TRUMP 48.8 CLINTON 42.1 JOHNSON 5.8 STEIN 1.5 McMULLIN 1.2 OTHERS 0.6
BIGGEST TRUMP SURPRISE -- NY
Deadline for entries will be 0800h Eastern time on election day (so you can't use exit polls).
If the election is postponed then the contest applies to whenever it actually happens.
Any rules that prove to be unclear will be amended or clarified in subsequent posts but no new rules will be added at any later stage, only clarifications of the rules already in place will be issued.
Rule 1 should include Stein.
Rule 3 (tiebreaker) overlooked PA ... this is the list to use
HI, MA, RI, CT, DE, NJ, MD, NY, CA, IL, WA, VT, OR, MN, WI, PA, NM, MI, CO, VA, NV, NH, IA, NC, FL, OH, UT, GA
Late Monday night I will.
If any moderator could edit those two changes into the rules as shown in post 1, that would be helpful.
Isn’t the universal answer 42?
I guess I’m saying that I don’t believe AZ is a tossup but you can include it before UT, GA if you want. I think it’s a bogus poll.
Hillary wins three square blocks in Chicago, and nowhere else. Due to new rules, that puts her at 412 delegates and Trump at 3.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE
Trump 293 Clinton 245
POPULAR VOTE
TRUMP 47.75 CLINTON 47.25 JOHNSON 3.5 STEIN 1.0 McMULLIN 0.5 OTHERS 0.0
BIGGEST TRUMP SURPRISE — PA
Trump 270 Clinton 268 spoiled ballot 0
POPULAR VOTE
TRUMP 48 CLINTON 47 JOHNSON 3 STEIN 1 McMULLIN 1
BIGGEST TRUMP SURPRISE — VA
Pop vote has to be a bigger difference to get to 293
Trump +4 in pop vote.
300 Evs
Hillary will comfortably carry every city and town within a 40 mile radius of my house.
“In 21 of the last 22 presidential elections, Hillsborough has supported the candidate who has gone on to win.”
Hillsborough is going Trump or it will be 21 of 23.
Sorry, meant to post that in another thread.
I will go with vigo
This seems like a lot of work.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE
Trump 288 Clinton 250 spoiled ballot 0
POPULAR VOTE
TRUMP 50 CLINTON 45 JOHNSON 3 STEIN 1 McMULLIN 1
BIGGEST TRUMP SURPRISE — NH
I'd buy you a drink if I was nearby.
If only she would carry them a long way off, right?
Trump 335
Granny Scandals 203
Surprise, Surprise HI
No idea on the popular vote. Don’t really care.
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