The outcome of five contests considered tossups will help determine if Democrats retain control of the Senate, according to the latest analysis of races by The New York Times, with Republicans trying to capture Democratic-held seats in Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Republican Party committees have pulled far ahead in raising soft money, igniting concern among some Democrats who worry whether their party will be able to compete with Republican spending in the 8 to 10 Senate contests considered up for grabs.
While drawing considerable attention because it involves the only open Congressional seat in the state, the race here is one of at least three House contests considered competitive this fall in Washington, which proved to be something of an electoral bellwether in the 1990's.
Of 10 contests considered toss-ups, seven are in states that Obama lost in 2012.
If you win this thing in the contest, consider yourself lucky.
Contests were considered resolved when one contestant (the "winner") had gained sole ownership of the tube and did not tolerate its opponent near the tube.
That ruling, first reported by The Des Moines Register, has no practical effect — the Iowa contest is considered a "beauty contest" that does not officially allocate delegates to the winner, but provides Iowa's Republican Party a sense of the voters' thinking.
In some public schools, even spelling contests are considered archaic, because they might make the losers feel inferior.
But then there are the people who actually pay close attention to these sorts of contests to consider: political reporters and big donors.
We adopt a game theoretic model of contests to consider a variety of explanations for the differences in male and female competitive performance that have been proposed in the empirical and experimental literature.
