When the returns from Tuesday’s primary were finally counted, the newspaper turned the tables on the anonymous political insiders who had spent the closing days of the campaign handing out confident forecasts. Each was assigned a letter grade, from a gentleman’s A-minus down to a blunt D, and the report card offered a rare, lighthearted accounting of just how well the region’s self-styled experts actually read the electorate.
The exercise had begun before the vote, when a rotating group of operatives, attorneys and longtime office-watchers submitted their predictions on the condition of anonymity. With the results in hand, their calls could at last be measured against reality.
The grades ran the full alphabet of pass and fail. A few earned near-perfect marks; a broad middle settled into the B range; and a stubborn handful drew D’s and a good-natured recommendation to consider summer school before the next election cycle.
Head of the class
The top marks went to a pair of forecasters who had kept their predictions disciplined and specific. One, graded A-minus, had correctly identified the shape of the sheriff’s race and the appellate court contests without overreaching. Another earned high marks for a crisp, race-by-race rundown that named the likely leaders in the sheriff’s contest and both coastal state Senate seats. Steady calls on Robert Smith in the circuit court race and on the Republican statewide ticket lifted their averages.
Solid, if cautious
A large middle band of panelists landed in the B range. Most had played it safe, forecasting Gov. Bob Riley and the other statewide favorites while hedging on the genuinely close local contests. The graders rewarded accuracy but docked points for vagueness, noting that a prediction with no losers attached to it is not much of a prediction. Several who correctly flagged a runoff in the District 34 Senate race but waffled on the finalists earned a respectable if unspectacular mark.
Summer school recommended
The lowest grades went to the boldest gamblers. One panelist, who framed his forecasts as a string of Las Vegas wagers, was handed a D with a note suggesting summer school; his contrarian bets against the consensus mostly missed. Another skeptic who doubted Sam Cochran’s strength in the sheriff’s race and expected the Moore-aligned court slate to outperform also finished near the bottom. The graders were unsentimental: confidence, they observed, is no substitute for being right.
Part of the sport, the graders acknowledged, was the impossibility of a perfect score. Local contests turned on a few thousand votes, on turnout in a single beat, on the weather, and on a first-ever run with paper ballots that even the sharpest handicappers had struggled to factor in. A grade of B, more than one insider argued, was a respectable showing in a season that offered so many ways to be wrong.
The value of anonymity
If the report card stung, no one had to admit it. The whole point of the anonymous format was to let the insiders speak freely, and the grading kept that bargain intact: readers could see how the predictions fared without ever learning whose reputation had taken the hit. The panelists, for their part, could nurse their bruises in private and, presumably, sharpen their pencils for the fall general election, when the same crowd would surely be asked to do it all again.