By Anna Murray
12 October 2016
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Move aside, FiveThirtyEight, Daily Kos, and The Upshot. The Data Evaluation Sciences & Political Analytics Institute for Research (DESPAIR) today announces the launch of a new political-prediction blog.
After last Friday’s bombshell revelation of Donald Trump advocating sexual assault, his non-game-changing debate performance, and the defection of House Speaker Paul Ryan, DESPAIR is bringing The LoserCast online.
Featuring the proprietary Lose-O-Meter, The LoserCast, will forecast how badly Donald Trump and the Republican Party will tank in November.
The LoserCast’s exclusive algorithms will calculate defeat severity according to the following loss vectors.
- A Drubbing: A defeat, but in its most polite form. For those competitors who will meet again at the club
- A Shellacking: Worse than a drubbing. As with Obama after 2010, implies embarrassment.
- The Toxic Spray Tan: Applied when multiple down-ballot races are contaminated by Trump. Or Trump-taminated.
- The Immolation: Full GOP electoral-map meltdown. Like The Spray Tan, implies multiple down-ballot losses along with a desire to set oneself on fire.
- The Pussy Apocalypse: (or “Puss-ocalypse”) When, like a voting bloc of ravenous zombies, a nation of outraged women, tired of having their genitals grabbed, deliver the House, Senate and Presidency to Democrats.
Unlike its competition, The LoserCast’s ground-breaking Lose-O-Meter technology is not based on math. The LoserCast model averts the fundamental flaw of forecasting engines that rely on things like “numbers” and “statistics” and “scientific formulas.”
The LoserCast methodology is based on actual reality.
Three quarters of Americans can’t do elementary arithmetic. However, 75% of Americans believe in the paranormal, half accept the accuracy of horoscopes, 42% reject evolution, and a quarter say they are superstitious.
These facts clarify how a bigoted, misogynistic wackadoodle arrived at the top of the Republican ticket despite a preponderance of “data” predicting he would never be the nominee. Furthermore, they underpin the Lose-O-Meter’s singular forecasting technique.
The Lose-O-Meter has empaneled the following experts:
- Psychics
- Astrologers
- Creationists
- Groundhogs
The Lose-O-Meter will rely solely on the predictions of these panelists. The groundhogs, naturally, will answer yes/no questions with their responses determined on the presence or absence of their shadows.
The LoserCast survey will have all the swooping graphs and district-by-district zoom-in tools anyone wasting time at work could desire. The LoserCast maps will not employ red and blue, but rather shades from piss yellow to orange. Puss-ocalypse outcomes will be represented by deep pumpkin.
In its launch-day editorial feature, The LoserCast team of writers predicts that orange will replace red as the new hue of the Republican Party.
DESPAIR, Inc. has funded an unprecedented technological backbone in support of The LoserCast’s launch, preparing for instant virality.
“It’s all about the earned media,” said DESPAIR CEO Gerry McGinty. “When Mr. Trump is sitting on the toilet at 3 a.m. and hears about us calling him a loser, the sky’s the limit.”
A VC-backed Big Data venture, DESPAIR, Inc. plans to license its data and proprietary research techniques to political campaigns, lobbying firms, and thinktanks.
Anna Murray is CEO of emedia, llc., a technology consulting company, and a writer. Her essays have appeared in Vox, Luna Luna, The Reject Pile, The Daily Mail, Soundings Review, Piker Press, Adanna, and The Guardian Witness. Her recently completed new novel is represented by David Black Agency. Her non-fiction title, The Complete Software Project Manager, was published in January 2016 by John Wiley & Sons. One reviewer commented, “This is a technical book that reads like a novel.”