2000 Presidential Election Prediction Contest

On Nov. 6, I offered a bribe on MetaFilter (a Fray T-shirt and Devil Doll) to the person who most closely predicted the popular vote and Electoral College results in the 2000 presidential election.

The country responded by falling into a constitutional crisis that prevented either of these things from being determined until Dec. 12.

Using the presidential vote totals from the Washington Post and an Electoral College vote of 271 for Bush and 266 for Gore, here's the results:

As you may notice, I won -- a highly suspicious result, but accurate as far as I can tell. This is what you get for letting someone in Florida handle the counting.

Unfortunately, I disqualified myself beforehand from winning any prizes (damn it!). That leaves Stewart Butterfield (Metafilter username sylloge) as the projected winner. Stewart was in second place overall -- ranking 3rd in the electoral prediction and 4th in the popular vote prediction.

Congratulations, Stewart! Your Satanic totem and highly collectible Derek Powazek memorabilia will be in the mail soon.

If anyone is wondering why there's a missing elector in the results, Barbara Lett-Simmons refused to cast her vote to protest D.C.'s lack of representation in the U.S. Congress.

As an aside, if Florida's 25 electoral votes had gone to Al Gore, here's what the results would have been:

Politics · 2001/05/24 · 0 COMMENTS · Link