On Sundays, I’ve been writing about one simple thing you can do to end Trump. At this point, I’ve covered all the things that matter. Vote. Sign up for phone banking or text banking. Make sure everyone you know votes. So, here’s one superstitious thing you can do that won’t make a difference but might be nice to have in your back pocket as the election nears and anxiety levels go sky high. Cheer for Dallas in today’s NFL contest against the Washington Football Team.
In 2000, a sports statistician noticed that when Washington wins its last home game before a presidential election, the incumbent party in the White House wins the election. The correlation was strong through 2000 but has been broken since. As long as we’re discussing superstitions, let’s chalk up the break to the timeline-bending voodoo of the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision.
Revised augury to accommodate recent nonconforming elections suggests that Washington winning either means that the incumbent party will lose or the incumbent party will lose the popular vote and hang on to the White House through the nonsense of the Electoral College. Unless it’s raining and the right tackle’s jersey number is divisible by three.
Any reason to cheer against Dan Snyder’s Washington Football Team is a good reason. The game is at 1 p.m. ET today. I won’t be watching, but you know. It can’t hurt.
Update: The Football Team won big. So, let’s work to make sure the weak correlation gets weaker. The law of averages suggests that is the natural tendency of things.
Future Cartographic 