Sunday, March 16, 2014

Presidential Probabilities

In the Unites States Presidential Elections that span my lifetime (1960 forward), what states are most likely to actually select the president as tallied by the Electoral College?
That would be Nevada and Ohio!  So why does New Hampshire and Iowa get the first bite at the pie?

Wouldn't this be an interesting way to set up the primary system? It goes for 14 weeks with a primary set every other Tuesday starting with the 2nd Tuesday in March. Odd states would slip in the in between weeks and the US territories would be the first in between week not taken by an in between state. You would start with the states with the lowest accuracy first. Laying the on top of 2016, it would look like this:

MAR 8 - District of Columbia, & Mississippi
MAR 15 - Alabama
MAR 22 - Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Washington & Wyoming
MAR 29 - Nebraska
APR 5 - Hawaii, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, & West Virginia
APR 12 - Virginia
APR 19 - California, Connecticut, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Vermont, & Wisconsin
APR 26 - American Samoa, American Virgin Islands, Guam, Marianas Islands & Puerto Rico
MAY 10 - Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania & Tennessee
MAY 24 - Delaware, Florida, Missouri & New Mexico
JUN 7 - Nevada & Ohio

I think this scheme, patterned a little after sports draft philosophies, would create more interest. Allow more candidates a chance to garner support. Make the conventions relevant again. And by bolstering competition, be inherently more democratic. And it would self up-date based on the previous year's general election results.

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