The National (Un-Scientific) Bumper Sticker Poll

The regular T.G.I.R.F. (Thank God It's Republican Friday) feature in these pages is most probably in the process of lapsing.

I mean no disrespect. I just detect a lack of interest. However, Friday found me still idly surfing the web in a bipartisan frame of mind when Jay Bookman woke me from my reveries.The deputy editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal Constitution is responsible for kicking me off my seat and on my feet in order to put into operation an idea that's been percolating for some time in my aging brain. Last Wednesday, Bookman seemed genuinely concerned:

..... I realized the other day that I see a lot of Obama bumper stickers and almost no McCain stickers. Now, given the part of town I live in, that's not surprising.

But I've asked conservative friends who live in more conservative parts of metro Atlanta, such as Cobb and Cherokee counties, whether they have seen McCain bumper stickers. And they both say no, they don't. Very few if any, they report. Not many yard signs either.

Bumper stickers don't decide elections. But I think they do accurately reflect the amount of enthusiasm generated by each candidate among his base, and that enthusiasm in turn helps drive voter turnout in November. The person with a bumper sticker on his car is more likely to vote, and more likely to encourage others to vote.

So I'd be curious - anybody out there seeing McCain bumper stickers?

That is the question that's been beguiling me recently. I don't know what a McCain bumper sticker looks like. I'm not curious enough to go shopping on the 'Net, of course. That's not the point.

My point of agreement with Bookman is this: sticking a candidate's name to your bumper or into your front lawn communicates commitment to vote. So?

Why not take an informal poll among my readers (all half-dozen of them) as to where McCainster bumper stickers are rearing their heads? Maybe, why not also shop the poll to other blogs where I occasionally read and write?

I am really curious as to how McCain-Palin will be playing in Des Moines. Some of my favorite bloggers like Utah Savage, Coyote Angry, Mad Mike, Carolina Parrothead, Wizard and especially Coleen Rowley (just to name the first who come to mind) don't exactly live in dark blue states. By responding to this poll, they could earn some solid street cred by documenting the fact that they reside and vote in battleground states, not to mention behind enemy lines. That would be huge and they're certainly entitled to the additional respect that is due them! No comfy, fair-weather, blue-state liberals should begrudge them their props.

So let's try to put up a poll with some

• Statistics as to the ratio of Obama-Biden bumper-stickers to McCain-Palin stickers in your hood wherever it may be?


• Trend indicators like what were the percentages dividing Kerry-Edwards bumpers from Bush-Cheney bumpers in 2004?

What I'm saying that such anecdotal data derived from our admittedly informal Bumper Sticker Poll might end up to be a better predictor of November 4th than the stupid, day-to-day crypto-polls stuck up on your teevees by snot-nosed network wannabe pundits.

Any takers?