Joke: World Series victories by the Boston Red Sox predict defeat for incumbents in presidential elections.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2004]
I'm not one for omens, but every time the Red Sox have won a World Series in the year of a Presidential Election, the incumbent has been defeated. Don't believe me? Check out this list:
I think the figures speak for themselves... |
Origins: Our tendency to find patterns wherever we can has
led to a number of claims that the outcome of events such as presidential elections is foreshadowed by completely unrelated phenomena. Although some such claims are made with at least a little touch of seriousness (such as the notion that the outcome of Washington Redskins football games are predictive of
The joke here, of course, is that the Red Sox have been World Series victors so infrequently in the last several decades that only once has a Red Sox championship coincided with a presidential election, and one has to go back
The day after Boston's victory in the 2004 World Series, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic nominee for president, starting riffing on the long wait between Red Sox championships:
"About a year ago, when things weren't going so well in my campaign, somebody called a radio talk show and they said, thinking they were just cutting me right to the quick, they said 'John Kerry won't be the president until the Red Sox win.' Well, we're on our way."
Wearing a Red Sox cap and reveling in the team's World Series championship after an 86-year drought, Kerry saw a metaphor for his own White House bid.
Last updated: 28 October 2004
Sources: