Last night, the first four matchups of March Madness Poetry 2014 were decided — and what a great set of matchups they were!
Since this is the first time we’ve ever had a “trifurcated” vote, no one really knew what to expect, so I wanted to take a minute to analyze what happened and present my findings to all of you.
First, let’s look at 1-spite-vs-16-milquetoast. Margo Lemieux maintained a lead over Gloson Teh in the Public Vote all the way through the voting period, and ended up with 55% of the vote. The Authlete Vote leaned more substantially in Margo’s favor — 35 to 15. But look at that Classroom Vote! All 19 classrooms — representing over 500 kids — voted in favor of Gloson’s poem! So interesting to re-read the poems and think about why that would have been.
Next matchup: 8-consort-vs-9-killjoy. Robert Schechter led in the public vote pretty much all the way through. And this was the ONLY vote that was visible to him or anyone else (other than me). And then the voting period ended and BAM! Damon Dean proved the narrow victor in both the Authlete Vote and the Classroom Vote. I wonder how all of you (especially you, Robert!) felt about the “surprise” ending? Technically, I could make the results of all polls visible continuously, but that also means that authletes and classrooms will be able to see the results before they vote, which was something we wanted to avoid based on feedback from the 2012 event.
Third matchup: 5-depending-vs-12-situated. Our first ever “sweep”. Jean Daigneau won all three of the Public Vote, the Authlete Vote, and the Classroom vote. What you didn’t see (but I did) was that at one point Nessa Morris had led the Classroom vote 5 to 1 before Jean climbed back to win it.
Fourth and final matchup from last night: 4-whatever-vs-13-auxiliary. Wow! Did everyone realize that this entire matchup was decided by ONE STINKING VOTE??? I could see on the back end that David Harrison was leading the Authlete Vote all the way and that Bonnie Bailey was leading the Classroom Vote, and that Public Vote was teetering back and forth throughout the day Thursday. David had the lead in the Public Vote with only six minutes left to go! Then Bonnie captured five straight votes to take a one vote lead. They then traded votes such that it was tied-Bonnie-tied-Bonnie-tied-Bonnie-tied-Bonnie-tied with 32 seconds to go. And then with exactly 17 seconds left in the matchup, Bonnie received one last vote that put her ahead 172 to 171. Madness!
Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts on these matchups, the balance of the Public vs. Authlete vs. Classroom vote, the style of “revealing” the latter two votes, and any other thoughts on your mind.
I invite your comments below.