
We’ve had the leaders’ debates, and now we enter the second phase of our elections pool. Those of us who had the guts to guess the moment the campaign was called now get a chance to look at the campaign, assess the momentum, and decide whether to make a new prediction, or say “let it ride!”.
Second phase votes will be accepted in the comments to this post, and in the post I’ll be making on the BlogsCanada election blog. This phase closes with the closing of the polls in Atlantic Canada on June 28, 2004.
Scoring the Votes
Here’s how we’ll decide the winner:
- Your two guesses will count towards your final score. If you participate in round one but don’t participate in round two, you will have deemed to have said “let it ride”. Your first round vote will be counted as your second round vote as well. Those who only participate in round two will be assessed a forty point penalty.
- Each participant starts out with a score of 100 points.
- We will compare your predictions for each party with the actual final seat total for each party. We will take the difference between each prediction and the final seat total, and add them together. The resulting number we’ll subtract from your 100 points. For example, if you predicted 140 seats for the Liberals in round one and 100 seats for the Liberals in round two and the Liberals won 120 seats, you will lose 40 points (140-120=20 plus 120-100=20 for forty points).
- You will lose five points for each party you incorrectly place. For example, if you guess that the Liberals will finish first, the Conservatives second and the NDP third, and the Conservatives finish first, the Liberals second and the NDP third, you will lose ten points, as you incorrectly guessed the final position of two parties. Likewise, if you predict that the Green Party will win seats and they don’t, you lose five points.
- The person with the most points remaining wins.
Night of the Stars
From Points of Information, Compas INC has given a number of interesting opinion polls on individual ridings. The sample sizes appear to be fairly decent: 300 potential voters in each riding.
The numbers show that the “star” candidates of this election may have a good night. Consider:
Jack Layton (NDP - Toronto Danforth): 53%
versus 33% for Liberal Dennis Mills and
10% for Conservative Loftus Cuddy and
4% for Green Party candidate Jim Harris
Ed Broadbent (NDP - Ottawa Centre): 47%
versus 27% for Liberal Richard Mahoney and
22% for Conservative Mike Mahoney and
4% for the Green Party candidate (name not given)
Belinda Stronach (Conservative - Newmarket Aurora): 59%
versus 30% for Liberal Martha Hall Findlay and
8% for NDP Ed Chudak and
2% for the Green Party candidate (name not given)
Scott Brison (Liberal - Kings Hants): 49%
versus 29% for Conservative Bob Mullan and
16% for NDP Skip Hambling and
5% for the Green Party candidate (name not given)
Ujjal Dosanjh (Liberal - Vancouver South): 41%
versus 28% for NDP Bev Meslo and
27% for Conservative Victor Soo Chan and
5% for Green Party candidate Doug Perry
Anne McLellan, on the other hand, has a fight on her hands, hauling in 42% of the vote versus 41% for Conservative Laurie Hawn. Meghan McMaster brings in a respectable 15% for the NDP and the Green Party gets 2%. But t’was ever so.
Unfortunately, Kitchener Centre is not included in the surveys. Intriguingly, Compass has called a few ridings for independent candidates, including Surrey North, where the incumbent candidate is leading the Conservative who beat him at the riding nomination by a factor of 3-1.
Credit Where Its Due Do Over
Earlier, when I linked to this article, I said the following thing:
Good move on the part of the United States to hand over Saddam Hussein to the Iraqi government following the American pullout. This shows confidence in the new leadership and is a powerful symbol that the U.S. trusts Iraqis to handle their own internal affairs.
Back then, the headline read that the United States would hand custody of Saddam Hussein and a number of Iraqi criminals over to the new government. But how things change. Just an hour after I’d written that, the article was updated:
Bush in no hurry to turn over Saddam
BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein will remain in U.S. custody until U.S. President George W. Bush is satisfied that the Iraqi government has enough security in place to hold him.
(sigh) It’s probably a prudent decision. But something about how one last article overwrote the one previous (the CBC’s fault, not the Bush Administration’s) still gives the feeling that the Bush Administration is reacting to events, rather than planning things out properly.