Who Wants To Play A Nerve-Wracking Election Simulation Game?

The Republican National Convention is over, and 2016’s movable feast of nonsense and worry now shifts to Philadelphia for the Democratic event. There are many revelations to come, such as the size of GOP nominee Donald Trump’s “convention bounce” in the polls, and the precise metric volume of Democratic Party bed-wetting between the moment this bounce is revealed and the moment when Hillary Clinton gets the chance to earn a bounce of her own.

But if you’re looking to pass the time between then and now, might I suggest we play an anxiety-inducing game together?

The last time the good folks at The Upshot ― the dedicated team of number crunchers at The New York Times ― ran a model of the general election, it was before the GOP convention in Cleveland. And they had a very concise and illustrative way of placing their projection in real-world terms:

For now, at least, Hillary Clinton has a 76 percent chance of defeating Donald Trump to become president of the United States.

A victory by Mr. Trump remains quite possible: Mrs. Clinton’s chance of losing is about the same probability that an N.B.A. player will miss a free throw.

Everyone can picture an NBA free throw in their mind. Do it now. What do you see? The tickling of twine? The laying of brick? These are both very plausible outcomes. So let’s play.

Pick one word from this paragraph and click on it. You only get one choice! And there are no backsies. This will simulate the election.

So how did you do? Did you extinguish the flame of centuries of Enlightenment thought or nah?

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Jason Linkins edits “Eat The Press” for The Huffington Post and co-hosts the HuffPost Politics podcast “So, That Happened.” Subscribe here, and listen to the latest episode below.