It wouldn’t be “March madness” without everything being turned into some kind of college basketball championship bracket to generate discussion and traffic. In this case, the Washington Post has painstakingly put together the 2016 presidential bracket of the Republican and Democratic candidates.
Some background from the Washington Post:
It is March, as you know, which means that media outlets such as ours use interest in the upcoming NCAA college basketball tournament as an excuse to develop imaginary brackets of other important contests. In part, this is because we are not bound by the stupid rules that govern advertisers, so we can refer to the Final Four™ without having to pay money to the NCAA (which, we assume, then gets distributed among the players or something). In fact, we can write Final Four™ without the trademark if we want. Final Four. Final Four. Pretty great.
But, in part, this is also because brackets are fun. People fill out tens of millions of brackets because the single-elimination contest is exciting. It is much more interesting than, say, a series of caucuses and primaries that are of quickly diminishing importance over the course of months and months.
First, the GOP bracket which is imminently more entertaining:
Next, the fairly empty Democratic bracket:
The Post has a detailed breakdown for every candidate and every decision, most of which are pretty humorous since this is mostly about tossing darts at a board.
I’d spend many more days thinking about this than any of the basketball games, but that’s just me.
