Opinion: The candidates, seen through beer goggles

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Inspired by the memorable poll in 2004 that identified George Bush as the candidate most swing voters would like to have a beer with, Rock the Vote recently teamed up with TouchTunes Corp., makers of Internet-connected jukeboxes, to ask bar patrons across the country to pick a candidate for brewski sharing. After two weeks and more than 72,000 responses, the result is a tie: 29% tabbed Barack Obama, and 29% picked none of the above.

You don’t need to be Ed Felten to question the accuracy of the results of these touch-screen machines. Given the setting and the equipment -- little privacy, no paper records, lots of voters with impaired vision -- the likelihood of mistakes is high. Nevertheless, if I were John McCain, I’d be alarmed by the results. With only 20% of the respondents choosing the Arizona Republican, McCain trailed even Hillary Clinton, who drew 22%. (It’s bad enough to have Estonia thinking that Hillary can drink you under the table....) What’s the point of being married to a beer distributor if it doesn’t make people want to hoist one with you?

Granted, there appears to be some self-selection bias. Evidently, Democrats are more willing to take part in Rock the Vote surveys while bar-hopping than Republicans; in response to the question, ‘Which party rocks,’ 34% said the Dems, 18% said the GOP, 18% said the Independent Party, and 30% went undeclared.

Another caveat -- the survey didn’t ask whether the respondent was registered to vote, or even an American citizen. The only personal information sought was the respondent’s gender, age and priorities among five issues. TouchTunes didn’t release any of the age data or the overall split between male and female participants, but it did show which issues were judged most important by the different genders. The economy was the clear winner among both genders, but health care ranked second among women while the war in Iraq ranked second among men. The details:

Jobs and the economy: 41% overall (top-ranked by 46.4% of the men, 34.4% of the women)
The war in Iraq: 21% (22.7% of the men. 18.8% of the women)
Health care: 15% (10.7% of the men, 19.7% of the women)
Global warming: 12%
The cost of education: 11%

Hmm. I wonder whether the war would have ranked higher if the voters had been sober. At any rate, the survey suggests a new slogan for the McCain campaign: Friends don’t let friends vote drunk.