The competitive side of me really wants to win! I came pretty close in both the primaries and general election.

As far as coming close on the vote total goes, aren't votes still being counted in Oregon? I called the SoS's office yesterday to inquire, and someone told me that was the case. They told they expected everything to be done by the end of this week, but they weren't sure of that.

Yeah, there are still a few straggler votes out there -- mostly ballots that were dropped off in drop boxes at the wrong counties and ballots that were torn, soaked, etc.

If there were a big money prize here, we might wait until every last ballot was counted. But there's not - and 10 days is long enough to wait!

At this point the number of ballots remaining should be fairly small. But that's why elections results are unofficial until 3 weeks after the election. At that point they'll be certified and we'll get access to the abstracts.

Also included in the list above that Kari mentioned is those ballots that had a signature match problem. Voters are sent a letter and given a certain number of days to come in and verify their signature at county elections. Once they do that, their ballot will be counted.

It's funny, I'm usually over optimistic on these things. So this year I tried a new track and went a bit more pessimistic than I'd like. It worked out on some races, like state legislative races I really wanted to win but felt we'd lose. But it also meant that in areas like Obama's electoral college count, I went way too low. So from now on I think I'm just going to stick with my optimistic outlook on these things.

Thanks for posting; I've been curious. Congrats, everyone!

I hope more of these folks will post comments in their own names now that they have built up some pundit cred.

When I inquired yesterday, they told me that they didn't really know how many ballots were left to be counted, but that 100,000 ballots was a fair estimate. I'm not saying you should wait on awarding punditology accolades or anything, but I am curious if anyone knows for certain just what the state of the counting is in Oregon.

w00t! That was fun. I'd like to thank all of the other competitors for a well-fought contest, particularly my two fellow 92-pointers. (Incidentally, "activist" is only my political hat. In my non-political life I'm a designer as well—maybe Maren and I are on to something).

I think it may be a bit early for a full-blown concession though, as I believe there are still votes to be cast. I seem to recall my guess for Obama's total being 1,060,200. Since the most recent count I'm seeing is 1,020,003, I'm feeling pretty good about the chances of there being another 40,197 Obama votes out there.

Obviously, that should be votes to be counted. Clearly all votes have been cast at this point...

I wish I could remember how I picked, so I knew which races I'd screwed up (other than the Obama total, which I wrote down knowing I'd be curious about it later—what I don't remember is how exactly I came up with that somewhat random number). Pretty sure I blew the Adamson race. Maybe Eberle too. Don't remember by thoughts on the Gilbert race. Sad to say, but I think I may have gotten Darcy's race correct, contrary to my wishes and small personal financial investment. Pretty sure I blew M61 because I recall noting that I would be pissed at being sold a bill of goods by supposedly progressive types who said we HAD to vote for 57 to prevent certain catastrophe (and yes, I'm pissed).

So how did you determine the answers to the questions about the number of senators, house members, and EVs? All of these are still undecided. Surely that would put me over the top....

<h2>Well, I went with 57 in the Senate, since I chucked Alaska and Minnesota (and Georgia isn't a flip unless/until the runoff changes the outcome). And the number of House races still to be decided is 6 - which won't change the outcome of this challenge (with its 10-seat ranges.)</h2>