Generate your own random Republican debate analysis with our web app

By Patrick Hogan  |  October 28, 2015 | 3:26pm
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Anyone can watch tonight’s Republican presidential debate and tell you who they think won or lost. In fact, almost as soon as the debate is over, dozens of political bloggers, pundits, columnists, and soothsayers will do just that, churning out analyses and scorecards with the night’s winners or losers.

These roundups sometimes feel like they were constructed by throwing darts at a board. In the last debate, CNN thought Sen. Ted Cruz “faded into the background,” while The Washington Post said he “held his own.” NBC wrote that the September debate was Ben Carson’s “chance to shine, and he fell flat,” but the BBC concluded “another dose of slow and steady may be just what the doctor ordered.”

Why not remove all pretense of observing reality and trust ourselves to the whims of fate?

We’ve created a simple web app that puts together a randomized scoreboard to show who soared and who snoozed, who won and who lost, who’s headed to the nomination and whose campaign is done, regardless of what actually happens in CNBC’s debate tonight.

The app takes snippets from analyses and scorecards published by mainstream news outlets (Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, etc.) about the last two debates to randomly predict a winner and loser of tonight’s event, as well as a few salient points on how they earned those titles. Don’t like what it shows you? Hit refresh to instantly get a new scorecard, and a new winner and loser of the debate.

Of course, the app’s predictions almost definitely will not happen, other than in an obscure corner of the multiverse. But if a roll of the algorithm’s dice does manage to accurately predict anything in Boulder, Colo., let us know. We will take all credit and gloat about it for months.

Enjoy.

 
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