Football and elections

I remember a friend of mine back in 2000 telling me that Bush was going to win because of the Washington Redskins game. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but Bush defeated Gore. I still think the election was stolen. Anyways, the way it works is if the Redskins wins the game before the election, the incumbent party stays in power and if they lose their game, the incumbents lose power.

This predictor has been accurate 17 out of 18 times, and only missed the last time with John Kerry. According to Snopes:

Reality finally trumped coincidence in 2004: Despite the Green Bay Packers’ 28-14 defeat of the Redskins at the latter’s home field on October 31, presaging a victory for the Democratic challenger John Kerry in upcoming the presidential election, two days later incumbent President George W Bush was re-elected, breaking the Redskins’ predictive pattern. Thought the Redskins indicator is no longer perfect, with 17 correct matches out of the last 18 elections it can still boast an impressive accuracy rate of 94.4%.

So if you want to know who wins this election, check out the Redskins’ final score.