The Results Are In! (Really)

The Jeromegress Picktacular Results are in! The winner? Democracy.

But more accurately, Lauren of LMNOP was the winner. Congrats Lauren! You are a true American hero. Just like Paul Revere, or Gallagher. (PS, alternate wording of this joke: "Just like Paul Revere, or Carrot Top." Which one should I have gone with?)

Before we dive into the results, I need to explain some peculiarities in scoring that always seem to result from contests like these.

In the House: Democrats technically gained 29 seats on Tuesday that have already been decided. However, they gained 28 of them from Republicans, and 1 from Independent Bernie Sanders, who caucused with the Democrats. The Jeromegress rules state that all Independents are considered Dems, so I do not recognize that as a Democratic pick-up, because it was already considered a Dem seat. So, MJ's rules mean that the Dems won 28 seats, not 29.

NOW . . . Currently, there are a handful of races that are not officially decided. However, all but one of those can be realistically called for either party (they results aren't official because of run-offs or recounts that will almost certainly result in the way we think it will). WA-08 is the only truly undecided race because of voting irregularities that can only happen in the world's oldest representative form of government, but for now we are counting that one for the Republican, who currently leads. So we are counting CT-02 for the Democrat, and every other seat defaults to the party that had it before.

That puts the House at a grand total of 29 seats gained for Dems, by MJ Rules.

If the guys at the Matthew Jerome Decision Desk make any startling announcements about the races, then I will rush in and declare a breaking news alert, but all that will change by adding a Democrat is that the people in 2nd and 3rd place will switch, as will the people in 8th and 9th place.

So . . . Here are the long-awaited results of the 2006 Annual Jeromegress Picktacular. For all scoring rules, see this post.

1st Place: Lauren with 62 points.
2nd Place: Adam with 56 points.
3rd Place: MoCo with 54 points.
4th Place: (Not prize eligible) Matthew Jerome with 53 points.
5th Place: Dave G with 51 points.
6th Place: Cassidy with 50 points.
7th Place: Jemo with 47 points and the tie-breaker (not the dance-off).
8th Place: On Background with 47 points.
9th Place: Mike Raia with 42 points.
10th Place: Ashley with 41 points.
11th Place: Liberal Journal Man with 39 points.
12th Place: D-Money with 38 points.
13th Place: Michelle with 27 points.

Lauren gets the much coveted Matthew Jerome Picktacular Prize, which is . . . a written concession from the contestant who came in 2nd place. I'm not going to say this isn't a bit personal; when I notified Lauren that she won and narrowly beat out Adam, a mutual friend of ours, she said that that was all she wanted. So, Adam, sorry to make you do the legwork here, but I just offer the prizes here, I don't manufacture them. You can send your concession speech to matthewjerome@gmail.com, which I will post depending on how much profanity there is.

Special Awards:

Picks of the Litter: The bulk of the points came from the picks (as opposed to extra points for picking the right number of House and Senate seats.) So this award is a 4-way split for the four contestants who had the most correct picks: Myself, Adam, Lauren, and Dave G. all picked 17 of the 23 races correctly. Not bad against a point spread.

Master of the House: While no one picked all 5 House seats correctly, both Cassidy and Dave G picked 4 of 'em. Michelle, unfortunately, went 0 for 5 on this one.

Master of the . . . Senate?: Adam cleaned up here, picking a stunning 11 of 12 races correctly. His only downfall was the Virginia Senate race.

Governor's Mansion: Lauren clearly knows everything about governors, being the only contestant to sweep this category.

Cherry Pickers: These awards go to those who correctly picked the right numbers. No one got the House exactly at 29, but MoCo and Lauren were close with 30 and 28, respectively. The most optimistic were rewarded in the Senate, as MoCo and Cassidy both were the only contestants to correctly predict that the Dems would gain 6 seats to take the Senate. Liberal Journal Man, Lauren, and Michelle guessed the Governorship gains. And though it was only worth tie-breaker points, Dave G was the only one to correctly guess that Alan Schlesinger would gain 10% of the vote in the Connecticut Senate race.

Here ends this year's Picktacular. Now we've determined, once and for all, who is slightly more accurate at guessing things. We'll see ya next year. And Adam, Lauren is eagerly awaiting her prize.