According to an extremely useful poll reported in today's NY Times, Hillary Clinton supporters like white wine and Fig Newtons (not necessarily in that order), the elitist palates of Obama backers gravitate more towards granola and lattes, and McCain voters steer their walkers towards the grease pile that is stuffed crust pizza. I know what you're thinking: Wow. Isn't this just another dumb poll that doesn't amount to anything? Yes. More specifically, it's called "microtargeting" and it's mega-annoying. (See what I did there?)
The idea is that in the brand-driven United States, what we buy and how we spend our free time is a good predictor of our politics…Once they find small groups of like-minded people, campaigns can efficiently send customized phone, e-mail or direct mail messages to potential supporters, avoiding inefficient one-size-fits-all mailings. Pockets of support that might have gone unnoticed can be ferreted out.
This might explain that McCain mailer you got about how the candidate likes to think about policy while diving into a heaping bowl of Fiber One every morning. Something had to explain that non-existent mailer, right?
So what does all this mean? Like most polls, it pretty much means nothing. It's just another way to parse people into ever smaller, ever more meaningless categories based on the opinions of a miniscule sliver of the population dumb (and/or bored) enough to say "Yes," when they answer the phone and someone says, "Would you mind answering a few questions for a poll?" Ultimately polls like this exist just to ensure that Obama's "What's up with the increasing price of Arugula these days? Am I right?" speech will fall upon receptive ears.
But who cares if Republicans drink more Dr. Pepper and Democrats love Sprite? Do people get into fights over which soft drink is superior? No, not really. But they do get into very heated discussions about the contestants on reality competitions. Where is the political microtargeting for that?
It starts here.
I conducted a highly unscientific, thoroughly informal poll of Onion staffers to determine, once and for all, if there is any correlation between which Top Chef contestants you like and hate, and which presidential candidate you are voting for. Below are the results:
Barack Obama:
Amongst Obama supporters, Stephanie was the clear favorite, which is ironic because she's at the center of the whole "will there ever be a female Top Chef winner?" debacle that is currently cleaving the country in two.