Election Day is Here. Capture the Magic

Tomorrow is election day. Voters in New Orleans will be scurrying off to the polls with all due haste lest they open themselves up for more charges of "apathy" from their "butt busting" mayor. They will do this with all the vim and glee one would expect from an electorate ready to cast off the tainted, discredited "politics of the past" in favor of.... what? Oh. Okay so tomorrow's At-Large race is yet another one of those non-choices between a snotty self-important blowhard retread and... another snotty self-important blowhard retread.

I must admit I've found this race a bit boring from the start. It began with the sudden resignation of Oliver Thomas and the subsequent realization that, with such a short turnaround time for the special election, none but the most stale recycled political pros would be able to mount a successful campaign. And boy did that supposition ever pay off in spades. Cynthia Willard-Awful and Jackie Awful are not only two of the stalest of the available dig-uppable retreads they're also two of the most intolerable people in the city period.

But even in dismal elections, there is a fair amount of sport to be had watching the various observers, commentators, gamblers and such attempt to painfully parse just which candidate might be somehow ever-so-slightly less awful than the other. So far the scramble over which lame horse to back has shaken out this way:

Backing Jackie Awful:

1. The Times-Picayune.. albeit unenthusiastically as Oyster explains here



2. The city's social and economic elite of Comus, and Proteus type people, hoteliers, restaurateurs, other such scum



3. Dinosaur political organizations with exceedingly deceptive names such as the Alliance for Good Government, and the Regular Democratic Organization (Yes! They're still around... sort of)



4. Non-strategic voting Republicans



5. The Dragon-Slaying Yuppie left... for reasons I'm having difficulty figuring apart from the twin facts that Jackie Awful has never been indicted and is also white.

Backing Cynthia-Willard Awful:

1. Nagin, Richard's Disposal, Metro Disposal, our friends at Imagine GIS...other such scum.



2. The good guys: AFL-CIO, United Teachers, SEIU, mostly because they have no other choice when all that patrician money is flowing the other way.



3. The "alphabet soup" folks at BOLD, SOUL, etc. along with Dollar Bill and his Progressive Democrats minion horde



4. Strategic-voting Republicans



5. Probaly Jesus, if you were to ask her.

Meanwhile there has been a fair amount of grousing amongst the local internet type people over just how enthusiastic their support for Jackie Awful should be. The less-than-ringing endorsements have come one after another into the "lean Jackie" category. The basic argument there is that Cynthia Willard-Awful is too close to the Mayor and his cronies and, as such, is less likely to oppose whatever future "butt busting" schemes may emanate from his office between now and 2010. It's a fair argument and as good as any if you happen to need a reason to get off the fence. It's not the only strong argument in favor of leaning either way... but it is a good one. Whichever way you vote, and for whatever reason you do so, this election is bound to leave you disappointed with whichever Awful ascends to higher Awfulness as a result. Which is why, I've decided to keep things interesting by taking the opportunity to conduct the following experiment.

Over the past two years, the New Orleans blogosphere... in a pattern I imagine is not dissimilar to what happens in other cities... has grown exponentially in population. Along the way there has been some debate as to the full extent of the political or journalistic significance of the part-time monkeying around that goes on in these virtual quarters.

It has long been my position that while what is written on the internet constitutes an invaluable source of information and constructive discussion for the still relatively small portion of the population participating, the overall impact on public opinion is negligible. While there is equal measure distress and disagreement on this point among the more gung-ho boosters of the virtual quarters, I actually find the insignificance comforting as I have no desire to see Yellow Blogging bring about change in the real world in any way... other than perhaps the firing of Les Miles.

So here's the game. Below you will find two polls. The first asks whatever denizens of the virtual quarters happen by my site between now and the time the polls close tomorrow to indicate which candidate they are voting for in the At-Large race. I'm assuming that this will be largely Jackie Awful but I'd like to get some (unscientific) numbers behind this assumption.

The second poll question asks the same folks to indicate which candidate they believe will win tomorrow. This way, the experiment can determine not only the variance of the prevailing political preference of the virtual quarters from the public at large, but also the degree to which public opinion at large is different from even the perception of public opinion as relayed by the writings in the virtual quarters.





Have fun, kids. Don't forget to bust your butts and vote.