The Democratic Field - March Madness Style

Politics & Elections
1

With approximately 16 announced, rumored or possible candidates in the running, I thought it would be fun to pair off the candidates in a Sweet 16, seeded into 4 brackets of 4, single elimination tournament, and open each round up to your voting. Winners advance.

(for you non-sports fans, “March Madness” is the name given to the annual NCAA basketball tournament of 64 teams. After the first two rounds, the remaining teams are called the “sweet 16”.)

I chose the candidates and did the seeding based (arbitrarily) on this article on 538.com. To pare the field down to 16 I threw out two guys I never heard of. I’d tell you their names, but I’ve already forgotten.

It doesn’t seem possible to have multiple polls in a single thread, so for this round I will create 8 polls. Each will have 2 candidates, and each will be titled something like “Democratic March Madness - (region) Semifinal”. In this round, the match-ups will be #1 vs #4, and #2 vs #3.

Let the madness begin.

2

The Biden/Sanders matchup is inappropriate for a first round.

3

Everyone stop bitching about the seeding. No one’s forcing you to vote.

Let it be a fun distraction during the doldrums. We could do one every quarter or so leading up to the real votes early next year (when I’ll run my official contest) during these doldrums where it’s really just the chattering class making waves.

4

nvm.

5

One non-seeding quibble I have with how these are set up: It’s impossible to tell, either from the thread title or the mouseover, which one is about which candidates. It’d be better to put the names in the title, or at least in the body of the post. Polls don’t show up in mouseover.

6

That’s an excellent point. I’ll see what I can do; and at least, handle it in the next round.

7

Also: it should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: I’m trusting you to only vote once.

8

Got it covered. Don’t say we’re not customer service oriented.

9

I’m not seeing any bitching. I’m not seeing any seeding for that matter.

10

Why would that go without saying? How many people do you think post here that you’re going to get 8 polls answered with no crossover?

11

No “should.” It doesn’t go without saying. I know nothing about sports and I have no idea how this process is supposed to run. I saw the polls and voted in all 8 before I opened this thread and scrolled down enough to see this post of yours. If I’d seen your admonition up front, I would have voted only once. Sorry if I goofed up your process, but how was I to know, if you bury the instructions?

12

Of course you can vote in all 8 polls. I meant (apparently it wasn’t clear) … please only vote once in each poll.

13

nm

14

How can you vote multiple times in the same poll?

15

The only way I know of to vote multiple times in a poll is with sock accounts, which is already against the rules of the forum, and doing so just to vote an extra time in a just-for-fun poll would be an awfully frivolous way to get oneself banned.

16

Oh. I didn’t think of that interpretation, because with the radio buttons instead of checkboxes, it really does go without saying. “Never mind.”

17

I was under the mistaken impression that it was possible to vote twice in the same poll (I thought i had done so inadvertently myself). If that’s not possible, so much the better…ignore my admonition and carry on.

18

I’ve started another thread where we can discuss the seeding for future brackets.

19

They’ve made it to the Sweet 16, so they’re already 2 games in. We have a #1 seed against a scrappy #4. YMMV on which is which

20

With less than 6 hours to go:

Runaway contests:
Biden 51, Sanders 21
Harris 52, Holder 13
Hickenlooper 45, McAuliffe 14
Castro 47, Bloomberg 11
O’Rourke 54, Gabbard 8

A solid lead:
Gillibrand 41, Buttigieg 25

Still very much in play:
Klobuchar 35, Booker 29

A dead heat:
Brown 34, Warren 34