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My Attempts to Run for President: A computer game for political junkies. (DAVID ROBINSON, September 3, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

I'm not sure that The Political Machine will have wide appeal, but it does make a worthwhile afternoon's diversion. It models just under a year of general-election campaigning, during which you face off against a computer or a human opponent. Your choice of candidates ranges from Hillary and Arnold to FDR and Thomas Jefferson. Week to week, you fly your candidate from one state to the next giving speeches, raising money and launching ads. The programmers use 2000 Census data (and recent polling) to set up the party demographics and policy preferences of each state's electorate.

Players (who serve as campaign managers) soon learn that their safest bet is to focus on the issues that will push independent voters their way in each state. Not that such a strategy is without its perils. You can tailor your message locally, but if you stray too far from your national position voters may reject you as, well, a flip-flopper.

As players fly around the map, states turn shades of red or blue depending on who is ahead. The brighter a state's color, the stronger the lead. As you might imagine, California tends to stand out in bright blue, Texas in bright red.

My main insight from playing the game was how important the Midwest is.

Risk for pundits.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 3, 2004 8:13 PM