So what election myths/legends were busted in the 2004 election?
[ol]
[li]Redskins losing last home game before the election means the incumbent loses[/li][li]Early voting skews Republican[/li][li]Large turnout favors Democrats[/li][li]Incumbents polling less than 50% will lose[/li][li]If the Dow Jones Industrial Average is lower on Election Day than on Labor Day, the incumbent loses[/li][li]The Nick News for Kids presidential poll accurately predicts the winner[/li][/ol]
Taller candidate wins
Candidate with double letter in his name wins
Wasn’t Gore taller than Bush? If so, that myth was busted in 2000.
Ross Perot?
Candidate with more royal blood wins.
Depends whether you’re talking about who wins the vote or who gets to the White House.
Dude, I remember back when that thing predicted Dukakis.
This particular poll has only been conducted for the last four elections, 1992-1996. You may be thinking of the Weekly Reader children’s poll.
From Yahoo News:
Which, coincidentally, predicted a win for President Bush, making it 12-13 since 1956.
Same difference.
Wow I am SO sick of people making these little remarks. It was four years ago. Give it a rest.
Stark County, Ohio voted “correctly” in every election of the 20th century except 1976. This year they voted for Kerry.
Getting to the White House is what counts.
Actually, that’s a legitimate point. If these things have any validity, you could argue that they should be better predictors of the popular vote, rather than the electoral map. Of course, using that argument will throw out most of the predictors we are discussing today, which predicted Bush in 2000.
Anyway, another predictor:
Does anybody have a list of the various sports games that are supposed to predict the election? I know that they all have lousy track records, but it would be fun to see how they all fared this time around.
It may not have been Nick News, but it was definitely something on Nickelodeon. I was seven years old, and I distinctly remember the winner, Dukakis, being delivered with a pizza. His name was spelled out in pepperoni.
I swear.
Clearly, this is all the fault of the Red Sox winning the World Series this year.
Breaking that 86-year-old curse must have created a resonance in the sub-psychic etherial causative matrix, disturbing these presidentially predictive points which until this year were as reliable as the sunrise. And is it any coincidence that John Kerry’s from Massachusetts?? Q.E.D.
DAMN YOU BOSTON!!!
And your Big Dig sucks, too!! 
[QUOTE=Rillian]
[li]Redskins losing last home game before the election means the incumbent loses[/li][/quote]
I wouldn’t say that’s a ‘busted myth.’ It was true, it’s just that it was a meaningless coincidence.
[quote]
[li]Large turnout favors Democrats[/li][/quote]
I don’t know if one election can be said to have ‘busted’ this.
Wasn’t there some farmer who had a cow that dropped a meadow muffin on a picture of the campaigners and the cow got it right every time since 1984?
In a serious vein, I’d add these myths: