I'm proud to announce the start of the most exciting election prediction pool yet. Last year, I introduced the concept of prizes. This year I'm introducing the concept of good prizes.

This year's pool is sponsored by both Down East and the Kennebec Journal and prizes for winners include Red Claws tickets (thanks to the KJ) and a Down East 2011 calendar.

To enter, simply go here and record your predictions for the percentage of the vote each of the gubernatorial and congressional candidates will receive, the "yes" and "no" percentages for the ballot questions, and the seat distributions in the Maine House and Senate.

To make things a little easier, here's Talking Points Memo's poll tracker for the governor's race:

And here are the current weighted averages (and chances of winning) for each of the candidates from Nate Silver at the New York Times' FiveThirtyEight.com:

ME Gov - LePage 42.3% (76%) Mitchell 37.5% (24.1%) Cutler 15.6% (0%)

ME CD1 - Pingree 53.8% (94.2%),  Scontras 43.9% (5.8%)

ME CD2 - Michaud 54.1% (94.4%) Levesque 43.1% (5.6%)

Enter the pool here.

The views expressed on this Web site are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Down East Enterprise or its employees.