Marko Hurst

Hot “off the press”! The book cover to my new book due out next year is designed and ready to go. To keep up with the book and ideas that my co-author, Lou Rosenfeld, and I are testing check out the book blog.

Today is a big day here in the United States with what is expected to be one of the biggest presidential elections in American history. Not the least of all the issues that have been in the press and on our minds: War, Economy, Energy, Health Care, Taxes, and many more you’d expect. But what also makes this significant is that whatever party wins will make history for having either the first black President, Barack Obama, or the first woman Vice President, Sara Palin. While it’s too early to predict the winner from the polls I thought I take a moment to introduce you to a couple of “superstitions”, yet based upon the data and percent of accuracy you just can’t ignore: the S&P and the Redskins Rule.

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) – In the upcoming month to a presidential election the state of how well or poor the S&P is doing has proven to run around the 80% accuracy. With the recent events on the economy the S&P is down 24%, which then states that the incumbent party (those already in charge) would be ousted, thus Mr. Obamma will win tonight. Superstitions aside, those of us who study statistics cannot fully support this guideline, since we tend to hold 85% as our bottom line for what has enough statistical difference, but it is a decent indicator none the less, but don’t bet the farm on it.

Redskins Rule – Back in 2000 a member of the Elias Sports Bureau coined the “Redskins Rule”. According to the rule, if the Redskins win their last home game before the presidential election the party who won the popular vote in the previous election will win the White House. If the Redskins lose, the popular vote challenger wins the race.

Therefore, if the home team wins, McCain wins. Obama, meanwhile, needs help from Pennsylvania on two fronts: a Steelers win and the state in his column on Election Day. The Redskins Rule has proved correct in the last 17 elections, in fact it’s been true since the first elections that were held in 1936 after the team was formed in 1932. Which means to date the Redskins Rule has held 100% accurate and that is something that any statistician could bet on.

As I started out saying these are superstitions, the S&P may have be a real indicator due to it’s correlation to the economy and possibly people’s midsets going into an election, but the Redskins outcomes of a game doesn’t really hold any weight. That being said the numbers from last night’s Monday night football game results were Pittsburgh Steelers beating the Washington Redskins 23 – 6. So, if superstitions hold true let me be the first to welcome Mr. Obamma as our next president.