Based on the number of entries, most of you may not remember that I put together an election prediction contest (or perhaps most of you do, and I just have a much smaller readership than the handful I assume still read this thing). It seems like it would be gauche to have the results announced after next week's inauguration, so here they are!

The contest had five parts:

Part I: Pick the winners by state. There were 104 possible points here, as I threw in Guam's straw poll to get the contest to a 200 point theoretical maximum. Two of us managed to get 101 points: myself and Brian Hight. The odd number comes from Nebraska's split, as I awarded half credit to all of us who predicted McCain's win but not the split (the wife got full marks for picking the split, but then got half credit for picking a split in Maine, too).

Part II: Pick the percentages. Here you got 10 points each if you correctly predicted the popular vote percentages for Obama and McCain, losing a point for every quarter-point off one was. Kudos here to the wife, who got 17 of a possible 20 points.

Part III: Pick the Senate winners. Ten races, two points each. In order to score this I've assumed that Franken will remain the winner in Minnesota, and I gave credit for Georgia where people picked Chambliss and those who went with "other" to represent the run-off. Taking all that into account, Craig Barker ran the table and picked up all 20 points.

Part IV: Pick the next five finishers in order. This gave the minor candidates some love, with each candidate in proper order giving 5 points, those one position off giving 3, and two positions off giving 1. The wife earned all 25 points here, correctly getting the order of Nader, Barr, Baldwin, McKinney and Keyes.

Part V: Yea or Nay? Seven yea-or-nay questions, three points each. They were:

Would Santa Claus get 100 votes in West Virginia? A guy in Nevada who legally changed his name to Santa Claus was a registered write-in candidate in West Virginia, meaning that any votes for him would be reported under his name. Not surprising for a state full of coal, he only garnered 59 votes.

Would the Democrats get a 60 seat majority in the Senate? A nay for this admittedly unlikely possibility.

Would the Democrats get at least 250 seats in the House? Aye, they did.

Would any location be decided by fewer than 1000 votes? Nay, nowhere was even close to that number (though Missouri's 3903 is pretty tight).

Would the Democrats win more gubernatorial races than the GOP? Aye, they did, 7-4.

Would McCain or Obama get at least 75 percent of the vote in any state? Limited to state given the expected big win for Obama in DC, the closest we got was the President-Elect's 71.85 percent in Hawaii. Nay.

Would Obama win Dixville Notch, New Hampshire? The traditional first in the nation voting location went with Obama, 15-6, so aye.

Our wacky prop bet winner was the Left Reverend Erik Corley, sweeping the field for the full 21 points.

Entrants were also allowed to "ballot stuff" five races out a select group of state Presidential and Senate races. I don't think everyone realized that there were Senate races in play, as more than one entrant didn't use all of their stuffing opportunities. Brian was the only entrant to get the 10 extra points.

So when the smoke-filled room cleared, what were the final totals?

Coen, S. 170
Hight 167
Coen, M. 164
Barker 158
Corley 154
Sorenson 115

So kudos to the wife, whose success later in the contest made up for her McCain-friendly state picking. It should be noted that Greg's score is the result of an incomplete entry. I'm sure he'd have done much better if he'd bothered to try.

Thanks to all who played, and see you in 2012!