Hillary Clinton has already clinched the 2016 election, according to a method of predicting the result based on how the Washington Redskins are playing.
According to the “Redskins Rule,” if the team wins its last home game before the election, then the incumbent party will retain control of the White House. A Redskins loss usually means the party not in the White House wins the election.
The team’s last home game before the Nov. 8 election was played on Sunday, when the Redskins beat the Philadelphia Eagles 27-20 at FedExField.
The rule was first discovered prior to the 2000 election by Steve Hirdt, executive vice president of Elias Sports Bureau. Since 1932, when the Redskins were still the Boston Braves, that rule has held up with only one exception: the 2012 election, when the Redskins lost to the Carolina Panthers in its last pre-election home game but incumbent Barack Obama still managed to beat challenger Mitt Romney.
There is one caveat to the rule that was brought up by the strange circumstances that started with the 2000 election. The Redskins lost that year, and Republican George W. Bush won election, kicking Democrats out of the White House. Al Gore won the popular vote that year.
The Redskins lost again in 2004, implying that Democrat John Kerry should have defeated Bush, but Bush won. That led Hirdt to adjust the rule: whenever the popular vote doesn’t decide the election, such as in 2000, the result of the Redskins game in the following presidential election implies the opposite of what it normally would.
According to Hirdt’s revised rule, that means the Redskins loss in 2004 accurately predicted Bush’s win.
