How to Play the 2022 Election Dice Game
From snake eyes to box cars, roll the bones and check the odds.
In these last few days before the midterms, it can be easy to obsessively refresh the various prediction models and betting markets to get a sense of what America will look like after next week. But these models have roughly converged and won't materially change before the election. Outcomes now depend on how the likely-voter models break.
So, instead of clicking polls, you can get the same thrill (and nearly as much information) by rolling the bones.
Get two six-sided dice and you can play the American Elections as a game as many times as you want while waiting for the returns. And if things go poorly on Tuesday, you can keep the dice as a souvenir of America's Constitutional experiment.
So throw the dice and check the chart to see what midterm result you get.
Snake eyes; 3 percent of all rolls. Bad news: MAGA wins trifecta control in WI, MN, NV, AZ, GA, MI, and PA, alongside 56 Republican Senators and 255 Republican House members. Enlightenment-era America still exists in civil society and blue states, but the federal government has taken a hard (and hard-to-reverse) turn. This is your worst case! Fun, right?
3 or better; 97 percent of all rolls. Congratulations! In this very likely outcome, Josh Shapiro defeats Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. That state's citizens will have a direct opportunity to express a preference for who should be president in 2024!
4 or better, 90 percent of all rolls. This roll means that, in addition to Shapiro’s win, Paul LePage loses his bid to return to the governor's mansion in Maine, and Democrats also hold the important governorship of Minnesota. Both results ward off potential MAGA trifectas in battleground states, so this is another win for the right of future Americans to elect their president by voting!
5 or better, 80 percent of all rolls. Gretchen Whitmer wins re-election as governor in Michigan—so another state gets a popular vote for president in 2024. Go team!
6 or better, 70 percent of all rolls. Hey! Blake Masters and Don Bolduc lose their Senate races in Arizona and New Hampshire! Great news. Those guys were super creepy and at least semi-fascist. Try to focus on the fact that you’ll get this outcome 7 times out of 10 and not the fact that 3 times out of 10, Masters and Bolduc will become U.S. senators.
7 or better, 60 percent of all rolls. Huge milestone here. Governor Evers keeps his job in Wisconsin, which means that citizens in states representing over 270 Electoral College votes will be able to express a preference in 2024 for someone other than Donald J Trump! Also, Laura Kelly keeps the Kansas governorship blue, which is nice.
8 or better, 40 percent of all rolls. Herschel Walker loses and a non-MAGA governing majority controls the U.S. Senate. Kari Lake falls to Katie Hobbs for governor of Arizona, adding yet another state that will get to vote for President in 2024. Of course, we get this outcome less than half the time, so . . .
9 or better, 30 percent of all rolls. Tim Ryan wins a Senate seat in Ohio, showing the Democrats how to win critical electoral constituencies. Ron Johnson loses a Senate seat in Wisconsin, showing Republicans how to lose among those same constituencies. This is the flip side of rolling a 6, probability-wise.
10 or better, 16 percent of all rolls. Nice work high roller! Democrats keep control of the House, too! But the odds are getting pretty thin.
11 or better, 8 percent of all rolls. Don't the dice look thrilling when they have so many pips showing? You get Sen. Evan McMullin in Utah, Gov. Stacey Abrams in Georgia, and all kinds of heartwarming stories about scrappy underdogs coming back to beat expectations.
Boxcars, 3 percent of all rolls. You win! In this scenario, Bill Walker is governor of Alaska; Beto O'Rourke is governor of Texas; Joy Hofmeister is governor in Oklahoma; and Charlie Crist is governor (again) of Florida. In the Senate, you get Chief Val Demings from Florida and Admiral Mike Franken from Iowa! Competent patriots go to Washington D.C. to advance the cause of democracy Thank you for coming up clutch for Old Glory.
Bonus game: Will your election result cause the Republican establishment to (finally) stand up to Donald Trump? Roll the dice again, add that number to the number you got in the first round, and then multiply the sum by zero.
If the result is a 1 or greater, then Republicans draw a line against MAGA fascism!