# August 2020 probabilistic senate prediction competition **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 24, 2020, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/august-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/918906 "2020-08-24T18:08:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2020, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/august-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/918906/1 "2020-08-24T18:08:48Z")
Consider the following senate races: Alabama Alaska Arizona (special) Colorado Georgia Georgia (special) Iowa Kansas Kentucky Maine Michigan Montana North Carolina The goal is for each race to assign a value, P(D), between 0 and 1 that represents the probability that a Democrat wins the seat, the value P(R ) = 1 - P(D), that represents that a Republican wins the seat is implied by P(D). Note: there are two senate races in Georgia this year. Be sure to mark which one is the special election. Entries will be submitted by posting in this thread. The most recent post by a user with a timestamp on or before August 31, 11:59:59 PM CT will be that user’s entry (i.e. you can change your entry until the end of August). After the election results are known, I will compute the [Brier score](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brier_score) for each entry. Participants will be ranked by Brier score where lowest is best. Here’s my August prediction (PredictIt derived) which I will likely change (slightly) by the end of the month. | Race | P(D) | | --- | --- | | Alabama | 3.0% | | Alaska | 5.6% | | Arizona (special) | 93.7% | | Colorado | 96.6% | | Georgia | 19.1% | | Georgia (special) | 19.1% | | Iowa | 35.8% | | Kansas | 5.6% | | Kentucky | 2.2% | | Maine | 80.1% | | Michigan | 91.7% | | Montana | 34.0% | | North Carolina | 76.9% | [May thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/may-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/853889) [June thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/june-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/911809) [July thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/july-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/915863) ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/august-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/918906/2 "2020-08-26T11:42:48Z")
Here’s mine: AK 19% AL 6% AZ\* 94% CO 90% GA 51% GA\* 20% IA 56% KS 18% KY 10% ME 85% MI 91% MT 66% NC 73% ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/august-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/918906/3 "2020-08-26T11:45:08Z")
Lance, Note AK and AL are reversed on our columns; and, I think you mistakenly repeated your GA-special number (19.1) for the Ossoff race. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/august-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/918906/4 "2020-08-26T14:51:26Z")
Thanks for looking out. Firstly and annoyingly, when you order these states alphabetically by name, and when you order them by two letter postal abbreviation, you do not get the same order. This came up in one of the previous threads, and at once led me to submit my Alaska number for Alabama, which I corrected before the deadline. Secondly and weirdly, my algorithm was producing the same number to three decimal places for both Georgia races. We’ll see if that still occurs when I update at the end of the month. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/august-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/918906/5 "2020-08-26T15:06:32Z")
🙂 (Hey, discourse, here’s your freakin’ compete sentence) ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/august-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/918906/6 "2020-08-26T15:31:11Z")
On second glance, Excel vlookup was interpreting the \* in GA\* as a wildcard and was returning the value for GA. I think I’ll just have my Python script export a markdown table and skip the Excel step entirely. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/august-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/918906/7 "2020-08-26T19:30:09Z")
Ha! I’m a teacher, and something similar happened to me once — some students ended up getting the wrong grade because Excel would autofill a value as one previous in the list. I immediately created digital folders for the following semester’s classes called “Final grades — AUTOFILL OFF.” ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2020, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/august-2020-probabilistic-senate-prediction-competition/918906/8 "2020-08-31T16:58:50Z")
There’s still 12 hours to get an entry in. Here’s my final update to mine… | Race | P(D) | | --- | --- | | Alabama | 2.7% | | Alaska | 7.5% | | Arizona (special) | 92.4% | | Colorado | 95.9% | | Georgia | 18.6% | | Georgia (special) | 11.9% | | Iowa | 35.4% | | Kansas | 5.4% | | Kentucky | 2.8% | | Maine | 75.6% | | Michigan | 81.7% | | Montana | 27.9% | | North Carolina | 73.8% |