Competing for the Presidential Election

Watching the election results on November 4th doesn't have to be a passive activity. Create your own personal state-by-state scorecard or make it a family competition. 

The Basic Competition

1.  Start off with a map of the nation, a blue pen, and a red pen for each person.
2.  Before election day (how far before is up to you as things can change on the last day), each person decides if the state will cast its electoral votes for McCain, and marks that state red, or Obama, and marks that state blue. 
3.  If it's a competition, decide the prize for the winner.  In our family we each chose a different family outing.  For the November election, if I win, the family is going to spend the afternoon at an art museum, without complaining.
4.  On Election Day, have your map, an easy dinner, and watch the returns.  For each correct guess, the player receives one point.  When all of the states have declared the winner, which may be after the election is decided, count up the points and see who won!
5.  For a little more excitement, have a chart of the electoral votes for each state so you can track how close each candidate is to 270 electoral votes (this will occur on TV also) and what combination of the remaining states he needs to win the election.

Variations - Harder

• For the solidly decided states, such as California, predict by what percentage one candidate will beat the other.  Give a point to the person who is closest to guessing the gap and a bonus point if someone guesses exactly right.  For example, if sister picks California for Obama by 10 percent and brother chooses Obama by 15 percent, if Obama takes California by 14 percent, brother gets the extra point for the closest prediction and no one receives a bonus point.
• Predict which candidate will win the popular vote.
• Guess which party will gain the most seats in the House and also in the Senate.
• Follow the Senate races and guess who is going to win.
• Track the House elections and predict the winners or maybe just the representative in your area.
• Follow a local election or local issue and predict the outcome.

Variations - Easier

• Have one person in the family, an adult, guess the outcome state-by-state and then have the children confirm the predictions as the winner of each state is declared.  The networks usually have a little fanfare whenever a state is called, so the kids could watch for the announcement and confirm the parent's choice.
• Give a child a blank map and have her color in the states either red or blue as they are declared for each candidate.

Resources

• Election 2008 at www.npr.org is dedicated to election issues with a round up of stories that are continually updated.  There is a terrific interactive map that shows which states are decided, which are leaning Democratic or Republican, and which are a tossup.  Most of the major news outlets have something similar.
• Parents are the best resource for their kids.  I try to find one news story a day to bring up either after school or at dinner.  We don't have deep political discussions, sometimes the conversation takes off and sometimes it is very quick.  Frequently, the conversation moves to other topics of character, tactics, truth, racism, sexism and even teenage sex. 

Have fun!