Oh, what’s that? You caught that little “usually” I dropped in at the end there? Glad you mentioned it. This brings us the First Rule of Forecastinating:
RULE #1:
Nothing is certain.
Forecastinators use phrases like standard deviations, reasonable probability, and confidence levels to explain away why our models and equations are only sort-of accurate. You hear it all the time: The exception that proves the rule. A 40% chance of rain (has it ever just 40% rained on you?). If this but not this, then that. If if if if if.Nothing is certain.
It’s ingenious, really. By telling you in advance that there is a chance – ever so slight – that my hypothesis may be wrong, I am prepared for all scenarios. If my prediction holds, I told you so. If my prediction does not hold, well, I told you that, too.
So back to our prediction: The winner of the U.S. Presidential race will be the person with the longer name… (usually).
There have been 56 U.S Presidential elections in our country’s history. For each, I have taken a simple and easy to calculate measure – the total number of letters in the winner’s first and last name (and middle initial, when used commonly) compared to those in the name of the major-party challenger (so suck it, Free Soil party). Dating all the way back to 1789, when George Washington [6 + 10 = 16] defeated John Adams [4 + 5 = 9], the candidate with the longer name has won nearly twice as often as the candidate with the shorter name.
This is only mildly intriguing until you observe a second trend on the graph: Since 1920 (Warren Harding [13] over James Cox [8]) – the longer name candidate has won 75% of the time. When you throw out ties (winner and loser have same number of letters) and disqualify Nixon in 1976 for cheating (highlighted red in the graph), that figure jumps to 85%.
In fact, only 3 candidates in the last 88 years have had more letters in their name than their opponent and lost – Hubert Humphrey [14], Walter Mondale [13], and Michael Dukakis [14]. This only goes to show that even a Forecastination as ironclad as ours cannot overcome all deficiencies, such as poking your head out of a tank like a giddy little gopher.
Just think how much of our lives we could have saved just last year. Instead of debating if the 2008 election would be a referendum on W, or a surge to elect the first black President, or all the other sideshows (see: “You betcha!”), you could have placed winning money down in Vegas the moment both major party candidates were decided. Barack Obama [11] was going to best John McCain [10] for one simple reason: 11 trumps 10 (interestingly, Hillary Clinton [14] would have beaten McCain as well).
Now, “real analysts” and “rational adults” will scoff at the Presidential Names Law as mere happenstance, but a Forecastinator will tell you it outlines a real behavior. With the pace of our world ever increasing, we the people of the 20th and 21st centuries simply don’t have the time to drill down into complicated political issues (and please don’t ask us to find Afghanistan on a map – or Cleveland). But we do know instinctually that a person with a long name is usually important (says Herbert Higginbotham [19]).
Doubt it? With no other information, who would you vote for President – Dave Stone [9] or David Wellingstone [17]? One of these men is your dentist, the other is your President. This is why you always see Presidential candidates using their full first names, or sneaking that middle initial in there. Forecastinators rightly attribute Harry Truman's middle "S" [for a total count of 12] as the key to his narrow, come-from-behind victory over Thomas Dewey [11].
So when you’re looking ahead to 2012, all you really need to figure out is if the GOP will be smart enough to nominate a Mike Huckabee [12] over a Mitt Romney [10] or Sarah Palin [10]. Just like that, Forecastinating has taken what would have been a massively complex, multi-layered decision and made it as simple as third-grade math.
Americans can still do third-grade math, right?
0 comments:
Post a Comment