June 29, 2008

Two ‘Write-ins’ with Top Ten Potential

Caroline Kennedy and Bill Gates showed top ten potential from a list of twenty unofficial ‘write-in’ candidates

In addition to the list of 80 ‘short-list’ candidates derived from the most speculated political candidates for a VP role, a list of 20 ‘write-ins’ were included in the OPTIMIZE*08 exercise.  The ‘write-ins’ included business leaders (Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, and Jack Welch); presidential progeny (Caroline Kennedy and Ron Reagan); political pundits (Stephen Colbert, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, and Bill O’Reilly); film and television celebrities (Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Chuck Norris, Denzel Washington, and Oprah Winfrey); and politically tuned musicians (Toby Keith and Bruce Springsteen).  All ‘write-ins’ could be shown on either the Obama or McCain ticket in the course of the evolution.

The top ‘write-in’ candidate was Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President John F. Kennedy, who had a better survival rate than 35 Obama ‘short-listers’ with a would-be rank of 6th.  Kennedy bested Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, Michael Bloomberg and John Kerry to name a few. 

Meanwhile, Bill Gates had a better survival rate than 31 McCain ‘short-listers’ earning the former Microsoft CEO a would-be rank of 10.  Gates had a better survival rate than notable candidates including Fred Thompson, Joe Lieberman, Newt Gingrich, and Bobby Jindal.  Bill also did relatively well among ‘write-ins’ on the Obama side though bested by Oprah Winfrey placing third and his Silicon Valley counterpart, Steve Jobs who placed second. 

Making the fifth spot of both Obama and McCain top five ‘write-in’ lists was Ron Reagan, son of President Ronald Reagan.

Methodology:

At the beginning of the study, all VP candidates had an equal presence in what is called the evolutionary population. As voters made their 40,000 ticket choices throughout the study, stronger candidates multiplied in the evolutionary population while weaker candidates start to die off. The ‘survival Index’ is a relative measure of a VP candidate’s ability to survive in the evolutionary process. Stronger candidates who improve their presence in the evolutionary population will have survival indices over 100 while candidates with a shrinking presence will index less than 100.