Election Day is exactly three weeks away, and so Sim Elections here at http://SimElections.tBlog.com... is holding a contest to see who can predict the election winner in each state across the USA.
Who can play: anyone with a tBlog user account
How to play: simply cut and paste the entry form below and leave it as a comment to this blog. You may change your picks anytime before November 1st, at 11:30pm EST.
Scoring: if you correctly pick the winner of a state, you get as many points as that state has votes. For example, if you pick California for Kerry and Kerry wins California, you get 55 points.
If there is a tie between two or more players, the popular vote pick will come into play. Whoever has the least difference between the popular vote count and the count guessed in the entry form (over or under) wins.
ENTRY FORM:
Time last poll closes State Name # of Votes write in your pick here
7:00pm EST Georgia 15 Indiana 11 Kentucky 8 South Carolina 8 Vermont 3 Virginia 13 7:30pm EST Ohio 20 West Virginia 5 8:00pm EST Alabama 9 Connecticut 7 Delaware 3 DC 3 Florida 27 Illinois 21 Kansas 6 Maine 4 Maryland 10 Massachusetts 12 Mississippi 6 Missouri 11 New Hampshire 4 New Jersey 15 Oklahoma 7 Pennsylvania 21 Tennessee 11 8:30pm EST Arkansas 6 North Carolina 15 9:00pm EST Arizona 10 Colorado 9 Louisiana 9 Michigan 17 Minnesota 10 Nebraska 5 New Mexico 5 New York 31 Rhode Island 4 South Dakota 3 Texas 34 Wisconsin 10 Wyoming 3 10:00pm EST Iowa 7 Montana 3 Nevada 5 Utah 5 11:00pm EST California 55 Hawaii 4 Idaho 4 North Dakota 3 Oregon 7 Washington 11 1:00am EST Alaska 3
(TOTAL 534)
TIEBREAKER
Candidate Name: write your estimate of total popular votes here
Badnarik, Michael Bush, George Kerry, John Nader, Ralph
After weeks of campaigning and voting, the results of the tBlog Simulated Elections are in. According to the polls, the best political blog on tBlog is...
ITS A TIE!
The Conservative Hitman by deshanews 11 votes 50% Dr. Forbush Thinks by drforbush 11 votes 50%
The Right-wing and Left-wing top blogs split the vote right down the middle. Could this be an indicator of things to come?
Congratulations, deshanews and drforbush, and to all those who participated.
Its finally time for the Final Round of voting for the best political blog on tBlog! First we narrowed it down from 26 blogs to the top 6. Here are the results from that round:
1) The Conservative Hitman by deshanews 7 votes 2) Dr. Forbush Thinks by drforbush 4 votes
3) The Metropolis Times by therealspartacus007 2 votes 3) You Can't Change My Stripes! by redtigress 2 votes 5) flip SIDE down by flipsidedown 1 vote 5) Wasting my time by whoisjohngalt 1 vote
Meaning that The Conservative Hitman will face Dr. Forbush Thinks in the final round of voting! Good luck, and congratulations to all the contestants. Voting closes on Monday, October 4
Round 1 of the tBlog Simulated Elections has concluded- congratulations to the winners!
Voting for Round 2 will proceed from now until September 25. Vote for which blog you think is the best. The top two vote-getters will proceed to the final round.
After some thought, I realized that my initial design was too complicated. So here we go:
From now to September 17th, you can vote in the polls below. The top blogs will advance, the number of which is determined by the number of blogs running in that category:
After the advancements, we will have another round of voting to narrow it down to the two finalist tBlogs.
Please vote only once. I know all of you are honest and would never inentionally skew vote counting just to win an election, because democracy is just that important...
Besides, its no fun winning if you didn't really win.
Since we're all political nerds and the screwiness of Hot Blogs has ruined the only form of competition we have, I thought it would be fun to have a tBlog Simulated Election. The purposes are to encourage political blogging of all perspectives, help us forget our differences and grow closer as a community just like real elections do (har har), and to entertain me.
So here's the rules. Please make comments and suggestions.
Voting:
Once a week, contestants vote for their choice for tBlog simulated President, via tBlog PM, to prevent cheating. Candidates that have been already eliminated will continue to be eligible to vote. All votes are confidential.
Bonus Votes:
Each week will also feature an Bonus Vote contest. Whichever active blog candidate wins that contest gains one Bonus Vote in every ballot after the contest. Ideas for Bonus Vote contests include search engine link rankings, week-to-week search engine link rankings improvement, Hot Blogs ranking, non-owner Comments or Comments per post, and whatever else you people come up with. Maybe even a live triva quiz in a chatroom would be fun.
Parties:
Just to make things interesting, when you sign up you get to pick a Party. Each real-life party that is polling over 1% nationwide is represented, so the choices are Democrat, Libertarian or Republican. If you choose, you may also run as an unaffilated Independent.
Primaries:
The first few weeks will be the Primaries. The Primaries will end once there is only one candidate remaining in each Party. If you are the remaining one and Primaries are still going on, you will have automatic Immunity, and will be exempt from that week's voting. During the Primaries, each contestant will recieve two votes: one for use inside their party and one for use on any blog outside their party. You may not vote for yourself. This system helps to create Party loyalty in the Simulation, but balances the advantages of belonging to a larger or smaller party, so you can feel comfortable joining the one that best fits your ideology.
If you run as an Independent, you will not recieve a vote for in your party- just your single at-large ballot. You will also not be given automatic Immunity.
General Election:
At the end of the Primaries comes the General Election. Each contestant gets a single vote, and each week one candidate is eliminated. The last blog remaining becomes the President of um... tBlog.
Ties:
If two blogs are tied for least amount of votes in the Primaries, both are eliminated. If more than two blogs are tied, then the two with the lowest lifetime votes are eliminated. If it is still a tie, whichever two have the lowest Poll votes for that week are eliminated. If it is STILL a tie, then whoever recieved the lowest percentage of Party votes is eliminated. If it is even a tie after all that, screw you, you're all out.
If two blogs are tied for least amount of votes in the General Election, follow the rules above, starting with lowest lifetime votes.
Polls:
Each week a javascript poll will be placed on this blog. This will allow candidates and non-running observers to vote for who they think should win. There will be IP tracking and other anti-cheating stuff built in, don't worry. Whoever gets the most poll votes gets 1 Bonus Vote for that week, and that week only. The poll is reset every week.
Signing Up:
Send a PM to SimElections (thats me) with your tBlog username, your Blog name, your Party and any suggestions. If you are one person running more than one blog, please do not enter both your blogs. I know who you are. If you're too embarassed to admit it, come up with some lame excuse why you can't enter. Just don't cheat. If enough of us suspect you're cheating we'll all vote against you anyway. :-P
The contest is open to all tBlogs that are politically themed and have been active for at least a month as of August 30th.
The race will begin as soon as at least 10 blogs have signed up, or September 15th, whichever is later. If less than 5 have signed up by the 15th, the contest will be cancled. It will not begin before September 4th, in order to allow time for more than 10 candidates.
This should be fun, sign up! All you have to really do is cast a ballot once a week, and I'll PM you the form, so you don't even have to remember. Of course, you can really get into it and campaign and form secret Skull and Bones alliances and sell votes to corporations and all that fun stuff, just like real elections!
