2006 Election Contest Results

Nov 21, 2006

Dear Friend,

Council for a Livable World announced that the reigning political genius for the next two years, the winner of its 2006 election contest, is Lowell Ungar of Washington, D.C.

Ungar scored 37 out of 39 possible points in predicting the winners of 12 Senate, 10 House and 8 Governors contests. He was first among 476 entries.

Ungar, a former staff member for Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, works for the Alliance to Save Energy in Washington, D.C.

Thankfully, however, no hanging chads were encountered.

Under the contest rules where races not decided one week after the election were not to be considered in the scoring, the New Mexico 1 House seat was dropped from consideration.

Ungar also received five points each for correctly predicting that both the House and the Senate would turn Democratic. He was wrong on only two races: the Pennsylvania 6 House race won by Rep. Jim Gerlach (R) and the Alaska Governor's contest won by Former Mayor Sarah Palin (R).

Ungar will receive $100 for his political wizardry; he will hold the title of Reigning Political Genius for the next two years.

The two contests that stumped most of the contest participants were the Pennsylvania 6 House contest between Gerlach and Lois Murphy and Illinois 6 House race, where Peter Roskam defeated Tammy Duckworth.

While 37 was the top score, 18 was the low score.

Three people tied for second place, scoring 36 out of 39 points:
Tom Perron
Jeff Lindemyer
Drew Cartwright

While all three correctly picked Republicans to hold 49 seats in the new Senate, the first tie breaker, Tom Perron wins the $50 as the second best political pundit after going to the second tie breaker, how many seats the Democrats will hold in the new House (Tom picked 228 seats – the correct number as of November 14th was 229).

Technically, Jeff Lindemyer of Council for a Livable World would have finished second because he guessed the exact number of seats held by Democrats as of November 14, but as a staff member he was ineligible to win a monetary prize.

The next three experts who finished with 35 points:
David Butcher
Michael Halperin
Michael Nguyen

Eight people were next with 34 points:
Robert Fleagle
James Harris
Halle Mayes
Bruce MacDonald
Gilbert Martinez
Michael Quirk
Tina Stoll
Zack Webber

Congratulations to all the top finishers. Some of you already have a career in political consulting; others might consider punditry as a new career path.

Sincerely,

John Isaacs and Guy Stevens