Posted on 11/06/2012 8:03:43 AM PST by MNDude
The Redskins Rule is a trend involving NFL games and United States presidential elections. Basically, there is a high correlation between the outcome of the last Washington Redskins home football game prior to the U.S. Presidential Election and the outcome of the election: when the Redskins win, the incumbent party wins the electoral vote for the White House; when the Redskins lose, the non-incumbent party wins.
This coincidence has held true in every election since 1940, except for that of 2004!
It got it right 16 times in a row. It's amazing if you think about the odds. Getting it once is a chance of 1 our of two, twice in a row is a chance of 1 out of 4, three times in a row the chances are 1 out of 8, and so on.
Thus, the chances of getting it right 16 times in a row is 1 in 65,536!
It was wrong only in 2004, but then it predicted right again in 2008.
By the way, if it holds, Obama is going to lose.
I had this game running on my I-phone, while watching the Texans on tv.
Was glad to see the outcome was in our favor. :-)
Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.
More reading of the entrails of a chicken slaughtered as part of a ritual.
And, after getting it right 16 times in a row, the chances of getting it right on the next turn are:
[ ] 1 in 131,072
[ ] 1 in 65,536
[ ] 1 in 2
Lol...I am a redskins fan...and after the game I said to my daughter, let’s hope the redskins rule holds true, so we at least salvage something from this.
The odds are an awful lot lower if you go “statistical anomaly hunting.”
That is, first chart the data points of whatever it is you want to find a correlation to. In this case it’s easy, just plot who wins each presidential race. It’s either Republican or Democrat going back to Lincoln. Simple.
Then go hunting for another set of data points, on any subject, from sun spots, to women’s dress lengths, to sports events, you name it. And when you find an exact, *coincidental* set of data points, you have it. It looks much better if the second chart is “either/or” as well.
Google makes this downright easy today, because it has “Google Trends”, instant graphs that can be used to compare two very different things, based on the number of searches for each thing.
For example, here is the chart of searches for “breast enlargement” vs. “breast reduction”. What does it prove? Nothing.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=breast+enlargement,breast+reduction
Likely, if you did a quick check, you could probably find several teams whose win/loss data points are 100% matched with the Redskins. But who would care if some New Zealand cricket team always lost its last home game before an American incumbent lost a US presidential race?
maybe those rich Redskin players aren’t looking to a higher tax bracket and threw the game this year
I am hoping for creation of an Eagles rule: when the Eagrrlls play crappy and lose on Monday night before an election,Philly voters stay home and drink, or shoot up instead of voting twice.
Since and including Abe Lincoln every election on November 6th, has gone to the republican.
It would be right 18 (or, I hope by tomorrow, 19) times in a row, if it were stated as:
If the Redskins win their last home game before an election, then the party who won the popular vote in the last Presidential election will do so again, otherwise the other party will win.
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