Put your punditry where the money is - Predictify's $100,000 Election Showdown

So you think you know electoral politics, eh? Then you might want to enter the Predicty/Rock the Vote $100,000 Election Showdown. Punditty did, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to finish in the money. Then again, he was pretty sure that Michael DukakisMichael Dukakis was going to beat George H. W. BushGeorge H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election, so we’ll just have to wait and see. For the record, however, he did call three of the last four presidential elections correctly months before Election Day (Clinton 1992 & ’96, Bush 2000). Punditty made no official prediction on the 2004 contest.

But he is this year, and so can you. The showdown costs nothing to enter, and you stand to gain a lot. Here’s how it works:

1. Go to http://www.predictify.com/election08/

If you have an account there, sign in. If not, create one.

2. Respond to 15 questions by picking the winner of 14 battleground states and predicting the total popular vote received by Sen. John McCainJohn McCain and Sen. Barack ObamaBarack Obama combined. In 2004, Sen. John KerryJohn Kerry got 59,028,444 votes and President BushPresident Bush got 62,040,610 votes, for a combined total of 121,069,054 votes. Votes cast for Third Party candidates DO NOT count in the total.

3. On Nov. 5, the day after the election, Predictify will score the picks and reward the most accurate predictors with a share of the pot.

For every prediction made, a dollar is added to the pot. At the time this report was filed, that amount was at $42,304. The pot caps at $100,000.

The 14 battleground states are listed below, along with Punditty’s parenthetical predictions.

Colorado (Obama); Florida (Obama); Indiana (McCain); Michigan (Obama); Minnesota (Obama); Missouri (McCain); Nevada (Obama); New Hampshire (Obama); New Mexico (Obama); North Carolina (Obama); Ohio (Obama), Pennsylvania (Obama); Virginia (Obama); Wisconsin (Obama).

Punditty isn’t revealing his vote total prediction except to say that he thinks it will be higher than it was in 2004.

Good luck, and please spread the word. Let’s help make sure the jackpot reaches the $100,000 maximum!