Here at Salon, come election time we organize a staff pool, asking everyone for their predictions of the results. This year, we're opening it up to the readers, and one lucky winner among you will receive a free one-year subscription to Salon.
The questions you'll need to answer to enter are below. First, a brief discussion of the rules: Submit your responses in the comments section attached to this post by 5 p.m. EST Tuesday. We have included a tiebreaker question -- as the name indicates, that will only count if there's a tie after the results from all the regular questions have been counted. If there's still a tie after that, we'll choose a winner at random from among those readers.
Also, please note that for any question for which we ask you for a number, "Price Is Right" rules apply. If no one guesses, say, the exact number of Electoral College votes that Barack Obama will get, then the answer that's closest without going over will be the "correct" one. Anyone who gave that answer will be given a point for that question. Along those lines, make sure your answer for the Electoral College question is numerically possible; there's a good counter at 270towin.com that you can use.
Finally, one question asks you to pick the winner of the Georgia Senate race. If that race isn't decided on Tuesday and goes to a December runoff we'll just drop the question as we tally everyone's scores. You should answer it anyway, though.
Without further ado, the questions:
1. What will Obama's popular vote margin be? (This should be expressed not as "52-48," but as "4 percentage points." Or, if you think McCain will win 52-48, "-4 percentage points.")
2. How many Electoral College votes will Obama win?
3. How many seats will the Democrats gain (net) in the House?
4. How many seats will the Democrats gain (net) in the Senate?
Pick the winner in the following races:
5. Pa.-12 -- Rep. Jack Murtha (D) vs. William Russell (R)
6. Minn.-6 -- Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) vs. Elwyn Tinklenberg (D)
7. Ga. Sen. -- Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) vs. Jim Martin (D)
8. Minn. Sen. -- Sen. Norm Coleman (R) vs. Al Franken (D)
9. N.C. Sen. -- Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) vs. Kay Hagan (D)
TIE-BREAKER:
What time (EST) will the presidential race be called? (For the purposes of the pool, we'll consider it called when any one of the three big cable networks or the Associated Press makes the announcement, whatever comes first.)
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