In the Electoral College Competition, students were asked to allocate 50 resource "points" in order to sway public opinion in the states, and win a mock-presidential election.

The basic strategy is reasonably simple. The marginal utility of a point spent on a state is 0 unless it is the point that wins that state, or the point that defends that state. For instance, if the Republicans had gone wonky and spent exactly 2 points on California (it is impossible to win the state with that many points), their total value would be 0. If it spent 3, however, their total value would be 54 electoral college votes. In this system, it is important to count the pre-existing votes in each state as points as well, even if they cannot be moved around, because if they are not counted then their EC votes don`t end up in the total.

The goal, then, is to make the 50 points have as much value as possible--winning as many EC votes as possible with each point. California, for instance, has a very high value for each point spent there: its 54 EC votes can be bought for the Republicans for only 3 points, if the Democrats don`t defend it. Neither side, of course, knows beforehand whether the points spent on a state will successfully "buy" that state, so it comes down to strategy and probability--guessing what the other party will do.

Both parties in 1st-hour Government class tried a twist on this basic strategy--they tried to minimize the value of the other party`s points by not spending anything on California. If one team had spent lots of points on California, only to take it unopposed, the value of those points would be relatively low because of all the extra points. This strategy has a great potential to backfire, since even with a great number of points, California points tend to have a very high value. If the Republican party had spent the 3 points necessary (in hindsight) to get California, the average value of each would be a whopping 18 EC votes. In contrast, they spent 6 votes getting Ohio, 5 of which were unnecessary, giving the points an average value of 3.5 EC votes.

In general, the Republicans spent too much on the "swing states" that started evenly divided. Missouri could have been won with 2 fewer points, and Ohio with 5 fewer. They did not spend anything on Louisiana. Dividing the 11 points they spent on swing states as equally as possible between them would have won all 3, winning the election because Louisiana would switch to the Republicans. Another way to win would have been to take California. Yet another would have been to defend more than they did, or to focus their offence on fewer states. For instance, Oklahoma was stolen from them, but their attempts to take Pennsylvania and Michigan were both foiled. A change in any of those states would have won the election.