2016 Election and random predictors

Apparently it was not only the polls that were fooled in this election. So were the random predictors/correlations, sports-related and otherwise.

1)  The World Series was wrong: A Republican won the presidency despite a National League team winning the Series. This is the first miss of the 21st century. It is now 17/28 overall, 12/18 since the end of World War II.

2) A twist on the World Series connection: In 8 of the years in which the Series winner predicted the election winner, the World Series went seven games. And those represent all 8 times a World Series had gone seven games in a presidential election year prior to 2016. The one time before this year that a Series went the distance without predicting the winner was 1912; that Series went 8 games (one game ended in a tie), with the AL Red Sox winning the Series and Democrat Woodrow Wilson winning the presidency. Seven-game Series are now 8/9 as a predictor.

3) Irony alert: The first World Series played in a presidential election year was 1908 (the World Series began in 1903, but was not played in 1904), when Republican William Howard Taft was elected. Which, of course, was the last time the Cubs won the World Series before this year. So we can look at this two ways: 1) When the Cubs win the World Series, a Republican wins the presidency, or 2) the Cubs just screw up the World Series/president connection.

4) The Washington Professional Football team was wrong. The team won its final home game before the election (beating the Eagles on October 16), which usually means the incumbent party retains the White House. This is now 17/20, although it has missed the last two years (the WPF lost its final home game in 2012, but the Democrats retained the White House).

5) Harvard and Yale were right. Yale beat Harvard today, which correlates (ex post, since the game is almost always played after the election is over--2000 was the lone execption) to a Republican president. This is now 21/33 historically, 10/13 since 1968, and 9/10 since 1980.

6) Finally, a semi-sports one: My daughter's Reform Jewish day school went overwhelmingly for Clinton. Looking at the schools attended by her seven basketball teammates (among whom the election was a regular subject of conversation between shooting drills): a Conservative Jewish day school, a public school, and  a secular private school went strongly for Clinton; an Episcopal school went close for Clinton; and two Catholic schools went for Trump. Make what you will of those last bits of information.