Letter from America: The road to a Republican or Democratic victory

In November of 2015, the Spartans of Michigan State travelled to Ann Arbor to play their arch rivals, the Michigan Wolverines.

Historically, this match-up had not gone well for the Spartans, winning only 20 times and losing 49 times in their previous meetings in Ann Arbor, in a series that started in the 1890s. Despite this dismal record, no undergraduate of either of these fine institutions, no matter how inebriated, would assert, based on these statistics, that the contest would be a walkover for the Wolverines. After all, historical frequencies are only good guides to future probabilities if the fundamental conditions of the "game" have not changed in the past and are presumed not to change in the future. ...