| Just as we did in 2006, the Swing State Project is having a downballot election prediction contest. We've handpicked fourteen hot House and Senate races (and one gubernatorial race) from all across the country for you to think hard about and submit your best guesses.
The rules are simple: Only one entry per person will be accepted (so if you post multiple revisions, we're only going to look at your last post), submitted as a comment in this thread (e-mail submissions will be junked). Submissions will be accepted until midnight Eastern on Monday, November 3rd.
What we're interested in is the final margin between the Democratic and Republican candidates (except for the tiebreaker), and the goal is to have the lowest score possible. So if you think that Debbie Cook will beat Dana Rohrabacher by a score of 55-45, what we care about is that you think it's going to be D+10. If she wins 53-47, that's D+6, so you get four "error points" added to your score. (Remember, fewer points = better.)
This also means that if Cook wins 50-40 (and third parties take the rest), you've still "nailed it" according to our system and get a perfect score of zero for the race. If, on the other hand, you call it D+10 and it winds up being R+10, you'll get 20 points added to your score.
So let's cut to the chase! Here are the races that we've selected:
WA-Gov: Gregoire (D) v. Rossi (R)
AK-Sen: Stevens (R) v. Begich (D)
MS-Sen-B: Wicker (R) v. Musgrove (D)
CA-46: Rohrabacher (R) v. Cook (D)
FL-25: M. Diaz-Balart (R) v. Garcia (D)
LA-01: Scalise (R) v. Harlan (D)
NE-02: Terry (R) v. Esch (D)
NH-01: Shea-Porter (D) v. Bradley (R)
NM-02: Tinsley (R) v. Teague (D)
NY-13: Straniere (R) v. McMahon (D)
OH-02: Schmidt (R) v. Wulsin (D)
PA-11: Kanjorski (D) v. Barletta (R)
TX-22: Lampson (D) v. Olson (R)
WY-AL: Lummis (R) v. Trauner (D)
And the tiebreaker:
MN-Sen: Coleman (R) v. Franken (D) v. Barkley (IP)
Ideally, your entries should look something like:
WA-Gov: D+6
AK-Sen: R+8
And so forth. However, for the tiebreaker (MN-SEN), please predict the EXACT FINAL SCORE for each candidate. You are free to predict final scores for the other races as well, but you'll make our lives a lot easier if you list the expected margin first as shown above.
Once again, the deadline for your submissions is midnight Eastern on Monday -- so get your predictions in soon. The top three finishers (ie, those with the lowest overall scores) will be treated to some of SSP's favorite chocolate babka (as pictured here).
Have at it! |
