McCain v. Obama

Here's to me stepping, once again, into territory where I don't belong and my economist brother piping in with details regarding where my logic is flawed! (Bring it on.) But really, who's going to win?

Today's polls show the candidates neck-in-neck: 47% McCain v. 46% Obama. ABC.com boasts myriad conflicting articles as I type, "Public still doubts Palin's readiness," "White women shift to McCain," and "George Stephanopoulos examines how Sarah Palin has boosted McCain's campaign."

A lot of my friends/neighbors are split. My Obama-oriented friends are filled with passion and outrage. They send missives all day long. My McCain-favoring friends are quietly smug. They somehow don't need to fight for their cause; it's a given. Perhaps mere mortal words cannot state their case effectively.

If I turn to my trusty Facebook, the "One Million Strong for Barack" group has 707,941 members and "Barack Obama (politician) has 1,855,105 supporters; whereas, the "1,000,000 Strong for McCain/Palin" group has a scant 65,820 members and "John McCain (politician)" only has 337,872 supporters. Quite a contrast.

While I realize that Facebook is not a representative sample of the U.S. population, it is an interesting dynamic. I think the numbers may actually support the key finding of my random qualitative survey of friends and neighbors: one segment vehemently supports its candidate and the other segment appears to be simply accepting its candidate to a moderate degree.

I wonder how the passion (or lack thereof) will manifest itself in driving people to the voting booths come November. If you want me, you can find me left of center off of the strip.