Governor Race Power Rankings

For as long as I can remember I have devoured the top 25 rankings for college football and college basketball as soon as they come out each week. I'm always eager to see where Carolina is ranked in basketball and where Michigan is ranked in football and I'm confident that Butch Davis will get us to the point soon that I can be worried about where Carolina is ranked in football as well.

I was thinking today at lunch that something to make the governor's race more fun could be to start a weekly top 8 pundits poll, ranking the candidates each week from most likely to win to least likely to win, with eight points for the person 'number 1' each week to one point for the person in eighth.

So let's do it! If you would be interested in being a voter for such a poll send me an email at 'tomj' @ 'publicpolicypolling.com'

Here are my ground rules for the moment:

-Ballots with the candidates ranked 1-8 would be due at noon each Monday so I could tabulate them and post the results by mid-afternoon.

-The identity of the voters would be public, but their ballots would only be public if they chose for them to be.

-Folks who are involved in a campaign in any official capacity are ineligible.

-You have to be following the governor's race closely enough to see what trends and issues might lead to shifts on a week to week basis.

-Though it will be hard to perfect this, we'd like some partisan balance. A poll made up exclusively of liberal bloggers is not likely to be very effective. I will come up with a way of weighting the results if there is a significant partisan imbalance and will report both the raw results and the weighted results.

In college basketball, anyway, the national champion is decided on the court, just as the governor's race will be decided at the polls. But that doesn't mean the weekly rankings aren't interesting to look at for trends and momentum. Don't take this too seriously!

So if you're interested in voting shoot me an email at 'tomj' @ 'publicpolicypolling.com' As soon as I have at least ten folks willing to participate I will launch this on the following Monday.

And if no one's interested I'll just publish my own list every week!