An empirical look at sports and politics

Brad Smith, a UNC undergrad, has analyzed President Obama's NCAA bracket, finding a statistically significant relationship between the number of wins Obama picks for a team and that team's location in a potential swing state in this fall's election, a relationship beyond the national average. (H/T: Kim Krawiec of UNC Law). Kim adds a nice caveat: not every pick of a school in a swing state will appeal to swing-state voters in the same way. For example, picking Duke will not appeal to North Carolina voters in the same way as picking UNC or NC State.