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The
Last Election Prediction You'll Ever Need
by Mad Dog
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As a public
service, I’ve rounded up a selection of more vital and accurate
indicators in the hope that they’ll point to a clear-cut winner in the
upcoming election. |
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The political
prognosticators are in high gear, churning out a new press release every
42.7 minutes (with a margin of error of 4%) in an attempt to predict who
will win November’s presidential election. Some are pollsters who call
voters at random so they can measure the pulse of those who haven’t
been able to figure out how to use their answering machine to screen
phone calls. Others track down Yale economists who have worked up
complicated computer models that have been accurate in five of the last
six elections, a percentage that works better as a batting average than
a mathematical predictor. And still others pour over historical factors
such as an incumbent’s approval rating in May, how the candidates are
doing in Ohio, and whether a cat’s thigh bone points north if tossed
at a dancing chicken under the full moon. For the record, these
indicators point to Bush, Kerry, Kerry, and the dancing chicken as the
winner. Fascinating, but far from conclusive.
As a public service, I’ve rounded
up a selection of more vital and accurate indicators in the hope that
they’ll point to a clear-cut winner so we can stop the barrage of
sniping commercials, put an halt to the endless stumping and
handshaking, and most of all, save enough money to send every American
on a 34-minute vacation to Dairy Queen. May the best candidate win!
Standard or poor?
According to some Wall Street analysts, the state of the stock
market is a good indicator of who will win the election. This, of
course, is coming from people who can’t figure out what the market
will do tomorrow, because if they could they’d be rich, retired, and
living in Tahiti where they wouldn’t give a worthless IPO about who
wins the election. They say that if the market’s doing well, the
incumbent will get re-elected. If it’s doing badly, he’s out. They
base this on the Standard & Poor 500 index, which so far this year
is heavily on the poor side, being up a pitiful 0.84 percent. While this
predictor could change if the market improves — okay, if it makes a
dramatic leap — as of this moment the market predicts John Kerry to
win.
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Since Bush and
Kerry both part their hair on the left — as much as he hates the
thought, Bush actually does something towards the left — this
prediction’s a toss-up. |
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Winning by a hair
Much has been made of Democratic VP candidate John Edwards’
hair, which shows that when it comes to political depth, the American
electorate is wading in the unnaturally-warm kiddie’s pool. While a
recent survey by Wahl Clipper Corporation showed that the
majority of Americans approve of Bush's hair over Kerry's, 51 percent to
30 percent, this doesn’t necessarily translate into votes. That’s
because overall tonsorial appearance isn’t what’s important, it’s
how they part their hair.
This information comes courtesy of True Mirror, a company that
makes what they claim is the world's only mirror that doesn’t reverse
your image. (HINT: It’s done with mirrors.) They say that only 6.97
percent of American presidents had their hair parted on the right.
That’s three out of 43, the oddballs being James Buchanan, Warren G.
Harding, and Ronald Reagan, and since no one remembers two out of three
of them, we might as well call it pretty close to unanimous. The True
Mirror people claim this is why Al Gore didn’t win the 2000 election.
Yes, apparently the Supreme Court didn’t like Gore’s right-parted
hair. And who can blame them? Since Bush and Kerry both part their hair
on the left — as much as he hates the thought, Bush actually does
something towards the left — this prediction’s a toss-up.
Measuring up to the office
Contrary to what I keep
hoping is true, apparently size does matter, at least if you’re a
presidential candidate. According to USA Today, in the past 25
years only once has the shorter candidate won the presidential election.
Interestingly, that was in 2000 when George Bush (5’11-3/4” , but
who’s counting) beat the 6’1” Al Gore. This time around Bush has a
bigger problem because Kerry is 6’4”. Winner: Long tall John Kerry.
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| Since
the football season won’t start for several months it’s a little
premature to make this prediction, but I’m not going to let that stop
me. |
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Being
a good sport – Part 1
Though good sportsmanship obviously has nothing to do with the outcome
of a presidential campaign — just watch a couple of campaign
commercials if you don’t believe this — football does. During the
2000 campaign, Monday Night Football
made the surprise announcement that both Dennis Miller and Rush Limbaugh
were huge mistakes as commentators. Just kidding. Actually they only
wish they knew back then what dumb ideas those were. What they really
did announce was that the outcome of the Washington Redskins’ last
home game before the election has been a flawless indicator of who would
win the presidential race. For the past 15 elections, if the Redskins
won so did the incumbent party. True to form, in 2000 the Tennessee
Titans beat the Redskins 27-21 and, lo and behold,
Bush won.
Since the football season won’t
start for several months it’s a little premature to make this
prediction, but I’m not going to let that stop me. The last Redskins
home game before November 2nd is against the Green Bay Packers, and my
best sources — okay, my brother — thinks it will be a tight game but
gives the edge to the Packers. Touchdown Kerry.
Being
a good sport – Part 2
While for years it was said that if the Yankees won the World Series the
Republicans would win, it turns out that’s become unreliable, and
there’s no room in this discussion for unreliability. That’s why the
new indicator is the Los Angeles Lakers. The last four times they took
the NBA championship title the Republican candidate won the election.
Since they lost to the Pistons this year, we have another nod for Kerry.
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When the predicting gets tough, call in the pros. A quick
online check of 2,398,172 self-proclaimed psychics turned up less
consensus than a vote at the Anarchists of America convention. |
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The Improbable
Debowy-Schulman Algorithm
According to an article in
the Annals of Improbable Research, Daniel Debowy and Eric
Schulman have developed an algorithm to predict who will win the
presidency. For the record, an algorithm is a mathematical formula, not
a jab at the 2000 Democratic candidate’s lack of dancing style. The Annals
of Improbable Research, in case you let your subscription lapse, is
the journal that’s behind the Ig Nobel Awards, a series of prizes
which are handed out each year to counter those which are named after
the peace-loving guy who invented dynamite. Past
Ig Nobel Awards have included a prize in literature to the
British Standards Institution for a six-page specification of the proper
way to make a cup of tea, a peace prize to the South Africans who
invented an automobile burglar alarm with a built-in flamethrower, and
one in medicine which went to the researchers who discovered that
listening to Muzak may help prevent the common cold.
Schulman and Debowy have created an
Electability Factor based on a complex formula which includes data such
as how long the candidate’s have held various political offices, their
military career, and whether they’ve been divorced or dropped a
nuclear bomb. A calculation performed very early in the campaign arrived
at the conclusion that either Democratic Governor James B. Hunt, Jr. or
Republican Governor William J. Janklow would win the 2004 election, but
since Janklow ended up in jail for killing a motorcyclist and no one
knows who Hunt is, the researchers performed an updated calculation.
According to the latest number-crunching, Bush and Cheney achieved a
combined score of 77 while Kerry and Edwards limp in with a pitiful
-110. Hands down winner: George W. Bush
Voter vibrations
As the saying goes, when the
predicting gets tough, call in the pros. A quick online check of
2,398,172 self-proclaimed psychics turned up less consensus than a vote
at the Anarchists of America convention. The postings at prophecies.us
predict everyone from Bush to Kerry to Jesse Ventura. Even Terry and
Linda Jamison, who claim to be the only twin psychics in the world and
the focus of many sexual fantasies, have let us down. While they say
they predicted the World Trade Center attacks while on the Art Bell
Radio Show in November 1999, and are the only psychics to predict a
year in advance that George Bush would win the 2000 presidential
election, they have yet to weigh in on this campaign.
Thus, I have to put my good vibes and
faith in Bob91322, who has a long post on the About.com
psychic forum in which he says he not only predicted the last
presidential election within 100,000 votes and 2 electoral votes, but
was the only psychic to predict that Gore would win the popular vote and
Bush the electoral vote. And has those predictions time and date stamped
at a psychic forum somewhere as proof. With credentials like that,
what’s not to believe? On February 16th he predicted that
Kerry-Edwards would beat Bush-Cheney by 5 million votes and 130
electoral votes. Chalk up another one for John Kerry.
OUR PREDICTION SCORECARD
Stock Market – as of
yesterday’s market close, Kerry
Hair Part – tied
Height – Kerry
Redskins – Kerry
Lakers – Kerry
Algorithm - Bush
Psychics – all over the map, but Bob91322 says Kerry
Score: Bush 2, Kerry 6
PREDICTED WINNER: John Kerry!
©2004 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Read them while you wait for these predictions to come true.
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