And the Winner Is . . .

In Outlook's election-year battle of the pundits, we pitted old school against new.

At last we can say which school won.

The high school.

Congratulations to Montgomery Blair's 10th-grade communication arts program students and their teacher, Lansing Freeman: You're our 2008 Outlook Crystal Ball champions.

As we reported the week after the election, we planned to wait dutifully until the outstanding congressional races were called before announcing the winner. So we waited. And waited. Sen. Saxby Chambliss won his runoff race in Georgia, and one by one, the too-close-to-call House races have been decided. But in Minnesota, the results remain murky. So, with apologies to Sen. Norm Coleman, opponent Al Franken and the Minnesota Canvassing Board members who spent last week awarding challenged ballots to one camp or the other, we're going to go ahead and announce a winner before they do.

With the presidential predictions weighted slightly more than the calls on down-ticket races, the Montgomery Blair students topped both the old and new schools of punditry professionals.

The students' electoral college picks: 363 for Barack Obama and 175 for John McCain.

The electors convened in each state last week, formalizing the tally: 365 for Obama and 173 for McCain.

In addition to coming significantly closer to those numbers than anyone else in the game, the students almost nailed the popular-vote percentages and accurately predicted the outcome (where it has been decided) in the key Senate races.

A future in punditry, anyone?