Everyone knows that over on LiveJournal, people are experts on politics. Don’t feed us bread, just let us hand out clever advice and make political forecasts. And whatever happens, we love saying, "I predicted this a month (a year) ago." So let’s find out who really makes accurate predictions—or at least guesses well. I hereby announce a contest: PREDICT THE ELECTION RESULTS! Prizes: 1st place: 0.75 L Johnnie Walker Blue Label whisky 2nd place: 0.75 L Johnnie Walker Gold Label whisky 3rd place: 1 L Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky we may also introduce some kind of special prize as the contest goes on To take part in the contest, you need to leave a comment on this post with your forecast for the results of the State Duma elections of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on December 2, in roughly the following format: United Russia - XX% Communist Party - XX% A Just Russia - XX% LDPR - XX% SPS - XX% YABLOKO - XX% Invalid ballots - XX% You can list the parties in any order. You can expand the list and include any parties taking part in the election (even Podberezkin’s party). But your forecast must include those seven positions. It is welcome if you specify results to one decimal place. If you think some party will be removed from the ballot (though that now seems impossible), just write "- removed". No need to make special notes like real/fabricated. It’s obvious they’ll rig it. But the contest is based on the OFFICIAL RESULTS—that is, whatever the Central Election Commission announces. Accordingly, the final results of the contest will be summed up on the day the final election result is announced. The winner will be the person who gets the fewest penalty points. For example, you wrote United Russia - 65.3%, LDPR - 6.8%. But the Central Election Commission ended up with United Russia - 66.3%, LDPR - 8.1%. Accordingly, you get one penalty point for each percentage point of error. In this case: 2.3. THIS CONTEST IS BEING HELD AT THE OFFICIAL REQUEST OF THE CENTRAL ELECTION COMMISSION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION. Remember, they recently met with bloggers and agreed to cooperate. Well, this is that cooperation. One of the members of the Central Election Commission got in touch with me and, citing Churov, asked me to put together this poll. Why they came to me—I don’t know. Probably because they know I’m the most honest one. I’m not going to cheat or delete comments. I don’t mind—so I’m doing it. Though I’m putting up the prizes myself. The only thing the Central Election Commission could offer to encourage bloggers was this: those who promote the contest in their own journals will be able to receive two ballots each on voting day. Update: if anyone made a mistake/typo, don’t write a comment replying to your comment. Delete the previous one and write a new one Update 2: Owners of paid accounts can now edit their comments. But we’re not idiots—all comments edited later than 8:00 a.m. on December 2 will be disqualified from the competition
People