Today I submittted my numbers to Norm for his Pundit Event. Okay, I will likely be taken to task for this if it all pans out differently next week, but I am projecting a Bush win, capturing the electoral college 290-248. My take on the major battlegrounds: Ohio and Florida will be red, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin blue.

SOME HISTORY: As a kid in Holland I ran a similar pundit event in the neighborhood getting participants to bet money on the outcome of Dutch national elections. The system of proportional representation meant that for Dutch parliament around ten parties would end up with representatives and the participant in my poll that came closest to projecting parliament’s composition after the election would win the entire proceeds of the bet. It must have been in the late 1970s that no one got even close, apart from our neighbour who had projected that the Communists - up to then a steady player in Dutch politics with a standard 8% of the popular vote - would be trounced. Our neighbour won a sizeable chunk of cash and he either gambled or somehow foresaw what was coming in the 1980s: the end of Communism as a force in mainstream European politics. Moral of the story: if you want to win contests like this, come up with something unusual.