Does Redskins Loss Presage A Kerry Win?

Puny Human Nick writes "As mentioned before, the last home game the Redskins play before the election has predicted who will win since 1944. Well, the Redskins v. Green Bay game ended a few hours ago and it looks as though Kerry is going to win on Tuesday."

Comments

No

[Anonymous Coward]

The Redskins suffered a bad call with 2:35 when they were about to tie the game. If Kerry does win, this must mean he does it unfairly.

Re:No

[TGK]

The problem w/ recounting only some votes is that it violates the Equal Protection clause of the United States Constitution.

While (logically) there's nothing wrong with recounting just those counties which are close enough to swing on the recount, legally this presents a problem because you are saying that the state has a more compelling interest to get person X's vote properly recorded than person Y's.

Unfortunately for Gore, this was a catch 22 (something the GOP won't point out I might add). While the legal side of things dictated that he had to recount every vote, the GOP was trying to stop the recount. If no recount could be achieved before the deadline (I don't remember the exact date but is was coming up fast) then Katherine Harris couldn't certify the election results. Without her certification the assignment of Florida's all important electoral votes fell to the overwhelmingly Republican Florida legislature.

Gore needed to try to expedite the recount process because a full recount could never be accomplished before Jeb and his cronies could toss the election to the legislature. While Jeb and co could have approached the Gore camp and said that they were going to stave off this maneuver until a full recount could be accomplished, no such approach or effort was made.

The legal decision was a formality, and the Court knew it. That's why if you read Bush v. Gore you'll discover that the Court goes to great pains to make sure the decision doesn't apply to anything else. Ever.

No...

[holzp]

Red Sox win 8 in a row, Patriots lose today, old sports adages are breaking all over the place when MA is involved.

Weekly Reader

[Helios1182]

The Weekly Reader has also correctly picked the president for about the same length of time. They chose Bush.

Re:Weekly Reader

[Alan Hicks]

The interesting thing is that the Weekly Reader is an actual Presidential poll of kids, and thus might have some relevance. The idea is that kids can tell you about how their parents intend to vote, and that people without kids or grand kids represent such a minority that they won't seriously effect the outcome of the election.

Now whether or not this is true or not is the million dollar question, but it at least has some relevance whereas a football game clearly has no relation.

The odds...

[Quaoar]

Ignoring which team was better each year, the odds are 1/2^14 that the game would predict the outcome of the election (14 elections since 1944). That's .0061%, roughly. Of course, you gotta realize that they look at all the games played over the years and look for patterns, and ANY football game of the season could possibly be a predictor of who will be elected. In the NFL, there are 32 teams, which have played about 8 games each so far this year. So total number of games played = 32 * 8 / 2 = 2^7. that brings our odds to 2^7/2^14 = 1/2^7 = .75%. Not at all negligible. Now you can start including multiple criteria for each game. For instance, if the total points stored in the Redskins game is over 30, the incumbent wins. Or, you could change it to a certain party winning. And we're just considering football, imagine if we included games from other sports played this year. The sheer number of baseball games almost guarantees that one annual match-up will be a good predictor of any "coin-flip" event such as a presidential election. So, the moral is, this isn't the least bit extraordinary.

Re:The odds...

[Artemis]

You do realize that part of what makes this "predicition" popular is the fact that it's the Washington Redskins (the Washington D.C. team) and it's related to their last HOME game before the election. This myth would not be nearly as popular if it were some prediction based on the St. Louis Rams last game at Green Bay or something. This is one that is relatively non-obscure, but still just coincidental of course.

Offensive tomorrow?

[imaginate]

I wouldn't be surprised if Bush & Co. decided on a major offensive Monday:

It's certainly interesting that a huge number of fresh troops just arrived in preparation for just that.

Would it work against the administration to do this? Polls say no.

Obviously, I'm not sure if they'd be that daring, but if they are, you heard it here first (if they're not, this comment, like most conspiracy theories, will just lapse into oblivion).

Re:Sounds like GOP spinning Iraq explosive theft.

[LMCBoy]

Is this the same Major who said he never saw an IAEA seal on any of the bunkers he visited? The same Major who said he blew up "munitions" and couldn't say if any of it was the high-grade explosives that are in question? The same Major who said he was at Al Qaqaa 5 days before the embedded KSTP TV crew shot video of US Soldiers at Al Qaqaa breaking IAEA seals, opening the bunkers, and examining the barrels of the high explosives still contained therein? Same guy? How can you conclude from his testimony that the explosives had been detonated?