u/UnflairedRebellion__

Happy Labor Day my fellow Americans! I figured that now is a good time to get started with my House predictions. I have been observing politics this year, but not deeply enough to really do these any earlier, but it’s time for a change.

For the record, while it technically could be lower, I have a stronger feeling that the generic ballot will be no redder than D+7. Ethan Chen made an article about how all of the indicators (primary turnout in general, specifically the Washington primary, special elections, generic ballot, etc). He doesn’t even go over Gallup’s party ID lean poll, which right now is D+10. Average these together and you get around a D+9 environment. While I am a bit skeptical that the environment will be about as blue as 2008, I was also skeptical that New Jersey would vote as blue as Arizona would vote red, that Trump would win the popular vote, and that Nebraska’s 1st congressional district would flip to Osborn, so I guess almost anything is possible. There’s also the 6 year itch, which historically is worse for presidents than the so called 2 year itch with their first midterms. Plus, Trump’s current Gallop tracked approval rating (36%) is worse than what Bush’s was in 2006 (38%). All in all, I’m predicting a D+9 national environment, so my predictions will be based off of that.

Now, the image you see above is a baseline for what a D+9 national environment would look like. Note: These are NOT my current predictions. It’s as simple as it gets. I take a look at each district’s Cookie Partisan Voting Index (or CPVI for short) and assume that in a neutral year, that district votes exactly according to said CPVI. D+X or R+X means that the district would vote 2X to the left or right of the nation at large. Then, I assume a D+9 year. This would mean that all Dem leaning districts, all even districts, and all districts from R+1 to 4 would go blue. R+6 and above would go red. The reason that I have the R+5 districts as tossups is because I think that as Trump gets more unpopular, the midterms will look worse and worse for Republicans, so there would be some serious potential for any of these seats to flip, even if they would technically be tilt R if we go just by the CPVI in a D+9 environment.

As you can see, Dems would get anywhere from 235-247 House seats, with a median of 241. Even at the lowest end of the range, this would not only be tied with the 2018 outcome, but that’s with the extra red seats that came from redistricting.

So when I see these reverse 2022 type of predictions, I’m always going with…why? I’m not going to say that it’s literally impossible. I am going to say that it’s extremely unlikely. Now please, have a good day. Take care y’all.

So, I have been wanting to do something like this for a while, ranking the contestants based on how well liked they are from the viewers. Since voting for the largest vote war in history ends, literally right now, I figured that now would be the perfect time to post a pre-merge ranking of these guys before doing a final one. However, actually going about doing that isn’t all that simple. Let’s take a look at a few methods.

Raw votes over time: This one is simple enough. You just add together how many votes each contestant has gotten. This isn’t exactly fair though. For example, the contestants that have been up for elimination the most of the top 10 are Marker, Book, and Price Tag at 8 each. Meanwhile, Golf Ball and Donut only have 4 eliminations at their belt.

Average vote count per Cake at Stake: While this one is technically fairer, as UFE hogs don’t get a big boost, there’s still a noticeable problem with it. Not all episodes have the same number of people be up for elimination. TPOT 3 for example had both Team8s and The S! lose. As they both had 7 members, there were a total of 14 people in danger. In contrast, when Just Not lost in TPOT 9, they were at only 5 people, so that isn’t exactly good either.

Another thing of note is that ranks aren’t everything. This is because teams tend to have differing levels of popularity, as shown below with the median vote counts per team in phase 1. Alongside those stats is what % of the other team ranks below the highest vote getter of the 2 eliminated people in that episode.

TPOT 4: 50%

Team8s: 4,169
The S!: 4,913

TPOT 5: 100%

Just Not: 2,970
Death Pack Again: 5,072.5

TPOT 6: 83%

TSTOE: 2,755
Are You Okay: 5,140

TPOT 7: 67%

The S!: 4,279.5
Death Pact Again: 8,526

TPOT 8: 50%

Just Not: 5,584.5
The S!: 5,463

TPOT 9: 83%

Are You Okay: 6,335.5
Team8s: 4,933

TPOT 12: 40%

Just Not: 13,960
TSTOE: 8,476

In 4 cases, the median member of the less popular team would get less votes than all members of the more popular team. On average, the more popular voted out player would get more votes than 67% of those from the other team. So you would have a situation in which Pillow would get less votes than Remote, but because Remote was on Death Pack Again and Pillow was on Just Not, Remote was cooked while Pillow thrived (most votes on Just Not).

But what the second phase? Let’s take a look at those team combos.

TPOT 13: 50%

CloudYAY: 14,000.5
Bagged: 19,250.5

TPOT 14: 28%

Team 2: 20,383
Death Pack Yet Again: 15,516

TPOT 15: 17%

Bagged: 17,052
Death Pack Yet Again: 17,062

TPOT 16: 40%

Death Pack Yet Again: 17,628
Team 2: 22,969

TPOT 19: 40%

Bagged: 26,498
Team 2: 30,817.5

TPOT 21: 25%

Death Pack Yet Again: 32,652.5
Bagged: 37,881.5

Due to having 1 vote per team rather than 1 vote overall, team popularity looks a lot more balanced. Despite this, the higher voted eliminated player per round still ranked above 33% of people on the other team on average. There are no scenarios in which the median player of the less popular team gets less votes than the least voted member of the other team. Regardless, big fish in a small pond syndrome is still a thing for this season of the show. In fact, across the first 2 phases, the average % of contestants ranking below the least voted contestant of another team is 52.

So, what’s the remedy to this?

Expectation Fulfillment Score: What the heck is this? Basically, it measures how much each contestants on average over or underperforms the expectation (or average vote count per character) in each episode.

Here’s a simplistic example. There are 50 people up for elimination, and 500,000 total votes. The average vote count per person would be 10,000. If I get 12,000 votes, then that’s 2,000 votes above the average. Next up would be the division, 2,000/10,000. My EFS is 0.2, or 20% overperformance. Only getting 8,000 votes would be a 20% underperformance on the other hand. These scores would be averaged together to create a final average.

But wait? There are some episodes with way more votes than others. Shouldn’t that be taken into account? I thought about doing that. However, there is a big problem with this. Because of there being many more votes in future episodes, this punishes those who last longer. When Pie got out, not even 60,000 people voted. Meanwhile, over 200,000 votes were casted in some episodes, like when Pillow and Yellow Face got out. Another problem is that giving more weight to later episodes amplifies the inevitable increase of negative scores for the mergers.

So that’s the tier list: In case you’re curious about the specific tiers, they’re based on a bell curve. The divide between B and C is being below or above the mean of -0.0056. From there, here are the tiers. SD means standard deviation by the way.

S Tier: 2 SDs above the mean
A Tier: 1 SDs above the mean
B Tier: 0 SDs above the mean
C Tier: 0 SDs below the mean
D Tier: 0.5 SDs below the mean (originally with C, split because it was getting too big for my tastes)
E Tier: 1 SDs below the mean
F Tier: 2 SDs below the mean

If you want alternative terms…
S Tier: GOATED
A Tier: Top
B Tier: High
C Tier: Upper Mid
D Tier: Lower Mid
E Tier: Low
F Tier: Bottom

Now I already mentioned Remote, someone who got out early because of her team placement, even though she ranked top half in terms of vote count both times that she was UFE (2/7 and 6/13, average of being in the 71st percentile), but what about the opposite end of the spectrum, someone who got lucky because of their team placements, constantly scraping their way to safety? Well, it’s time for a case study!

The Case of Bottle: Let’s look at the stats of Bottle shall we? Bottle was put up for elimination 7 times. Each and every single time, she ranked in the bottom 3 of her team. Her average percentile within her teams was only the 30th. Across the entire field of UFE contestants, it drops down to being the 27th. How many times was her team less popular than the other team? 4. I think it’s safe to say that if Remote and Bottle were both up for elimination, then Remote would get more votes to stay.

Besides them, let’s take a look at the tiers as a whole. Scores are rounded to the nearest tenth. Nobody is *exactly* tied.

F Tier: The Poor and Unfortunate

Characters in it: Pie (-7.4%), Foldy (-6.9%)

Here lies Pie and Foldy, the only ones besides Pencil to be victims of single eliminations. Now do I think that my current method is completely perfect in every single possible way? No, I don’t think so. Sample size is important after all. However, I will add that Pie was the second most voted position back in Liy’s elimination. >!Also, before entering the vote war, Pie had the 16th highest vote count out of everyone so far in the TPOT 25 voting, the 9th most when excluding potential debuters.!< As for Foldy, yeah sure she has gotten some more screentime as of late, she also lost in a VTS to Eggy. *Eggy.* I don’t think she was ever gonna rank high here on this list.

E Tier: The Below Average

Characters in it: Eggy (-5.0%), Naily (-3.8%), Robot Flower (-3.7%), Cake (-3.7%)

Because there’s 44 of these guys, I won’t go too in depth on many of them, rather I’ll instead be brief. Regardless, 3/4 of these guys were phase 1 boots. The only exception is Robot Flower, who has consistently ranked poorly amongst her peers, with an average percentile of 27th. Considering their early exits (plus Naily getting the fewest votes to save out of everyone), this tier is quite fitting for all of them, *especially* Eggy.

D Tier: The Slightly Below Average

Characters in it: Bell (-3.3%), Cloudy (-3.1%), Basketball (-3.1%), Clock (-2.6%), Bottle (-2.3%)

Once again, most of these guys are phase 2 boots. Now you might be surprised to see Basketball be ranked so low, but of the 5 times that she was up for elimination, she only outperformed expectations once, and just *barely* at that. It’s not like TSTOE is that popular of a team either, making her stats look even worse overall. Just like in the tiers below, most of these characters tend to fall into the background. Bottle is an exception, but I already went over her.

C Tier: The Just About Average

Characters in it: Ice Cube (-2.0%), Barf Bag (-1.8%), Needle (-1.5%), Gaty (-1.5%), Nickel (-1.5%), Pin (-1.1%), Liy (-1.1%), Donut (-1.0%), Pillow (-1.0%), Lightning (-0.9%), Coiny (-0.9%), TV (-0.8%), Yellow Face (-0.7%), Saw (-0.7%), Bomby (-0.7%), Tree (-0.4%), Eraser (-0.3%)

And here we have Donut, the first person mentioned to still be in the game. It’s not too surprising. Donut has been in the bottom 3 thrice, and only doing well once (getting first out of those from Team8s and Are You Okay). That, combined with his consistently poor VTE record (50th percentile once, below that other times), and I’m very skeptical of this idea that Donut’s gonna win the season. At this point, due to this being the largest tier, we get a wide mixture of characters. On one hand is Saw, a third boot, who happened to rank above 3 members of The S! when it came to her elimination. There are 4 other people here who are phase 1 boots. On the other hand is someone like Tree, who lasted a pretty long time, but kept scraping to safety once he was out on DPYA. Once the newbies of the pack were gone, Tree had nowhere to run. Lightning had a decent run, but Death Pact Again was not the team for him to be on if he wanted to be safe. Should have accepted SB’s offer dude! Finally there’s Pillow, who I was a little surprised to see so low. It does make sense though, as she usually does well compared to other members of Just Not. That doesn’t translate to being compared to the rest of the cast.

B Tier: The Above Average

Characters in it: Rocky (-0.1%), Snowball (-0.1%), Fanny (0.1%), Fries (0.3%), Puffball (0.9%), Winner (0.9%), Marker (1.0%), Tennis Ball (1.2%)

With the exceptions of Rocky and Snowball, everybody else on average is an overperformer in voting. This is also where we see the next few people still in the game, Fanny, Marker, and Tennis Ball. What’s interesting here is that Fanny just barely made the cut for a positive rating. She has never been first safe before, which of those who have attended multiple eliminations, is a trait only shared by Rocky and Puffball. She has been second safe numerous times before though. Greedy Black Hole. Rocky, Fries, and Puffball are some of the better preforming phase 1 boots. Rocky is somewhat carried by his overperformance in TPOT 4, being paired up with those from Team8s, a not so very popular team, while his team, The S!, also isn’t very popular. The other 2 were just on far too competitive of a team, Are You Ok. Neither of them got out by much (hell Puffball only lost to Golf Ball by 3 votes). Nobody else here is a surprise given their general popularity within the fandom.

A Tier: The Noticeably Above Average

Characters in it: Book (1.4%), Price Tag (1.6%), Pen (2.1%), Golf Ball (4.4%), Remote (4.7%)

Ok, so here is the elephant in the room, Remote. Yeah…her team was far too popular for her own good. I wasn’t kidding earlier about her and Pillow. When she got out, she got more votes than Pillow, the most voted contestant from Just Not. She also received the 2nd most votes from her team in TPOT 2. I know that there’s only a sample size of 2 here, but had she been on a weak or even average team from the start, it’s definitely possible that she would have merged. I will be making team averages in case you’re curious. But yeah, here are the others! Book, Price Tag, Pen, and Golf Ball are all consistently popular characters. Book rounds off our bottom half of those still in the game. I could see her ranking a bit lower time thanks to her now confirmed winner status. Ain’t nobody want to deal with that anymore. I will say that Book started off pretty poorly. However, from TPOT 12 onwards, she managed to do a lot better, even getting first a few times. Price Tag is a nice look of what happens when a guy who always gets second makes it to the top 10 of TPOT. They’ve attended the most Cake at Stakes at 8, and only got third once (only just barely behind Marker).

S Tier: The Cream of the Crop

Characters in it: Black Hole (5.9%), Grassy (6.0%), Pencil (7.6%)

And here we have them, the titans of voting. Pencil is another outlier, only being put up for elimination once. I do think her record of votes to save in a single round of voting will be broken someday, but I’m not so sure as to when. Her story arc definitely helped her gain sympathy points from the viewers. So technically, she is the most popular TPOT contestant. But let’s put a little more focus on the guys who were up for elimination 7 times each. Black Hole is extremely popular. He has been first safe all but twice. He also got the most votes overall three times. However, he isn’t the most popular of the remaining contestants. Grassy has also gotten the most votes overall thrice before, and being the first one safe all but twice as well. What really stands out for Grassy though are some of his individual performances. Two of the best performances both came from Grassy: In TPOT 23, when he scored 10.7%, and in TPOT 3, when he scored 21.4%! Sure, his team (TSTOE) was quite the unpopular one, but still! Given his other rounds (only being in the negatives once), saying that Grassy is more popular than Black Hole is something that I don’t think is necessarily wrong to say.

And now, to conclude, here are some team rankings.

Phase 1:

Are You Okay: 1.1%
Death Pact Again: 0.4%
Just Not: -1.1%
Team8s: -1.2%
The S!: -1.4%
The Strongest Team on Earth: -2.3%

None of this should be too surprising to you all. What you *could* find surprising is that AYO is the only team in which everyone has ranked top half. TV is ranked 22nd for the record, which is the lowest of everyone on that team and still above average. On the other end of the spectrum, TSTOE I could tell from the very beginning was supposed to be the popularity based underdog team. Although, this team is heavily weighed down by both Foldy and Eggy. Remove them from the average and you get -0.8% for the team, 3rd place instead of 6th.

Phase 2:

Team 2: 1.1%
Death Pack Yet Again: 0.5%
CloudYAY: 0% (technically -0.01%)
Bagged: -0.4%

As you can see, due to the phase 1 boot exodus, the teams get a lot more balanced here. Yes, CloudYay really is that average. That’s what you get when you have a relatively large range of contestants here, from Barf Bag to Pencil. Largest range of these teams.

And that is it! Thank you all so much for reading, and I hope that you learned something new. Take care!

Is this recency bias or is this player the new worst player in the series?

Final predictions before any October surprises

This is about Bo French btw.

(NOT MY FULL HOUSE PREDICTIONS) Here is what a D+9 national environment could look like, and why it’s the most likely national environment to have.

FvF Episode 18 Trailer

Unofficial TPOT 25 Voting Results

TPOT Popularity Tier List so far (based on voting data)

ONC asks patrons to vote on whether or not we can vote for who the winner should be.

Trump posts his presidential tier list.

Aggregated forecasts for the 2026 midterms (from Wikipedia)

Yeah good luck with that one.

My predictions for the rest of the season

What the fuck?

🌴🥥 EPISODE 14 TRAILER 🥥🌴 Disventure Camp 5: Fans vs Favorites.

🍿 🍿 🍿 🍿 🍿

On Point Politics is back, and with a map that isn’t a total R wishcast?

Trump wants to potentially rename ICE to NICE. What are your thoughts?

Quiz time! What do these people all have in common that nobody else has?

According to Trump, Massie is the worst congressman in the history of the USA.

BFDIA 25 TRAILER — TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW!