How have Vikings’ fans predictions fared this year?

Each week, as a part of our Daily Norseman Fanpulse surveys, we’ve asked fans of the Minnesota Vikings how many points the purple are going to win or lose by in a given week. Now that the first half of the season is in the books, the folks that track all this stuff for us have given us a look at how those predictions have fared over the first eight games, and for the most part they haven’t been too bad.

Well, with one pretty notable exception.

Let’s go through how our readers think the Vikings were going to fare in a given week versus how they actually did.

Week 1 vs San Francisco 49ers

• Vikings’ fans prediction - Victory by 9 points
• Actual game result - Victory by 8 points, 24-16

Week 2 at Green Bay Packers

• Vikings’ fans prediction - Victory by 5 points
• Actual game result - Tie, 29-29 (but, come on, who predicts a tie?)

Week 3 vs Buffalo Bills

• Vikings’ fans prediction - Victory by 14 points
• Actual game result - Loss by 21 points, 27-6

Week 4 at Los Angeles Rams

• Vikings’ fans prediction - Loss by 4 points
• Actual game result - Loss by 7 points, 38-31

Week 5 at Philadelphia Eagles

• Vikings’ fans prediction - Loss by 1 point
• Actual game result - Victory by 2 points, 23-21

Week 6 vs Arizona Cardinals

• Vikings’ fans prediction - Victory by 9 points
• Actual game result - Victory by 10 points, 27-17

Week 7 at New York Jets

• Vikings’ fans prediction - Victory by 8 points
• Actual game result - Victory by 20 points, 37-17

Week 8 vs New Orleans Saints

• Vikings’ fans prediction - Victory by 2 points
• Actual game result - Loss by 10 points, 30-20

Our readers have only picked the Vikings to lose two games this year, and the Vikings are 1-1 in those games with a loss to the Rams and a win over the Eagles. The team is 3-2-1 in the six games that our readers predicted that the Vikings would win.

For the most part, our readers have been fairly close in the mark in most of the games the Vikings have played this season. The big miss was, obviously, the Week 3 game against Buffalo, and that game that nobody really has a good explanation for.

We’ll have more from this week’s FanPulse survey in the next day or two, but that’s the first thing we wanted to highlight since it spotlights the first half of the season.