May the Best, or Tallest, Man Win

The presidential polls this year are like politicians--you can find one that says whatever you want to hear. With a tight race and contradictory results, it’s easy to dismiss it all as fuzzy math. So maybe it’s wiser to leave the election predictions to other, more “scientific” methods.

Like the direction the stock market and women’s hemlines are headed.

Or sales figures for Halloween masks and boxer shorts.

Or even the win-loss record of the Los Angeles Lakers.

These variables from disparate corners of culture have one thing in common--each is being used as a bellwether of presidential politics. How accurate are they? You decide.

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Presidential Height Index: “PHI” for short. Since the advent of television in presidential races, the taller candidate has won every race except one. In 1976, 5-foot-9 Jimmy Carter toppled Gerald Ford, a former football player who stood a full 6-foot-2.

Maybe voters thought Ford was shorter--the stumble-prone leader certainly spent his share of time on the ground. This year, the PHI has Gore standing tall at 6-foot-1, a full 2 inches above Bush, who somehow missed out on that whole “everything is bigger in Texas” thing. Advantage: Gore.

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Dribble-Down Theory: The Lakers have won the NBA crown four times in previous election years, and each time a Republican took the White House--Richard Nixon in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and George H.W. Bush in 1988.

Toss in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s win in 1952, when the then-Minnesota Lakers were champs, and you have an eerily precise indicator. And, as every Angeleno knows, this year the thunderous Shaquille O’Neal and gliding Kobe Bryant brought home NBA’s Lawrence O’Brien Trophy (named after the late Democratic Party chairman who also served as commissioner of the sports league). Advantage: Bush.

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The Trick-or-Treat Doctrine: Costume merchants say there are some presidential insights hidden behind Halloween masks. Every election year, rubber masks of the major candidates hit the marketplace in the pivotal month of October, and retailers like Jon Madjoch of Buycostumes.com say, since 1980, the candidate that gets his face out there the most typically wins the White House.

This year? Madjoch and other mask merchants say the Bush mask has steadily outsold its Democratic rival, but there are two strange subplots here: Nixon is still the bestselling presidential mask, so, technically, he should win this election. Also, the Gore mask bears a marked resemblance to Reagan. We’re not sure what that means, but it sure is spooky. Advantage: Bush.

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The Hemline Hypothesis: The rise and fall of women’s hemlines is one of the more venerable barometers of the political climes. Rising hemlines have suggested a Democrat will win, less leg has meant the GOP has a leg up on the White House.

Thomas DiBacco, a professor emeritus of history at American University and the son of a seamstress, points out that the Republicans dominated in the 19th century when dresses swept the floor, and, during World War II, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt ruled as fabric shortages sent hemlines higher and higher.

Miniskirts took hold in the 1960s, when John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson reigned, but long dresses were back in vogue by the time Nixon was elected, DiBacco says.

And this year? Fashion commentator Mr. Blackwell tells us hemlines are “down and finally have settled reasonably at a good length; however miniskirts are still very healthy in a much younger age bracket.” Advantage: Bush.

But Blackwell says the skirt predictor may be see-through. “I’ve never heard of skirt length predicting the president,” he sniffed. “It’s the stock market, that’s how you predict.”

Ah, of course, which brings us to. . . .

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The Cash Flow Corollary: Does a bear favor an elephant? A robust stock market is generally a strong sign that the incumbent party will win the day in November, says Yale Hirsch, the venerable historian for the “Stock Trader’s Almanac.”

“Sixteen times the incumbent has won, and in 14 of those elections the market rose between the last convention and Election Day,” Hirsch notes. The two exceptions: 1948, when Harry S. Truman pulled off a late-surging upset, and 1956, when Russian tanks rolling in Hungary rattled the market. This year the market is down, but Hirsch compares it to the turmoil of 1948.

“With oil prices up and the Middle East exploding,” he says, “I think it’s thrown a monkey wrench into the usual reliable indicators.” Still, the economy has enjoyed great growth during the Democratic reign of President Clinton, he and others point out, and voters tend to follow the money. Advantage: Gore.

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The Eyes Wide Shut Theorem: The presidential race may not come down to who blinks first, but who blinks most.

Psychology professor Joseph J. Tecce of Boston College has studied six presidential debates since 1960 and found that the candidates who blinked most went on to lose. The reason, he says, is summed up by his “eyeblink-hedonia hypothesis,” which states that negative emotional states cause people to blink more often, so that a candidate with less political vision starts batting away during the high-pressure forum.

A relaxed person blinks 10 to 20 times per minute so you can imagine that Tecce’s blink-o-meter was going crazy when, in the first of this year’s three debates, Bush logged a strobe-like 82 blinks per minute, far more than Gore’s 47 bpm.

It looked like the election was over. But then something interesting happened--Bush’s eyes stayed open in the second debate. In fact, Gore out-blinked him 35 bpm to 28 bpm. Bush’s decline was akin to “a runner going from an 8-minute mile to a 4-minute mile,” Tecce marveled. Put all three debates together, Tecce says, and the winner comes out “ahead by an eyelash, so to speak.” Advantage: Gore.

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The Mouth of Babes Method: If you want to know which way the political winds are blowing, you might want to visit a playground. Turns out that schoolkids are some of the best predictors around when it comes to winning the White House, at least according to two youth publication companies.

Covering more than 50 years, the polls by the Weekly Reader and Scholastic Inc. have each flubbed only one race. Weekly Reader voters thought Clinton would lose in 1992, the Scholastic kids missed the Kennedy win in 1960. “It’s quite a streak, quite a phenomena,” offers the Reader’s executive editor, Charles Piddick.

The results of the Reader’s survey won’t be announced until Wednesday. (“There’s a definite result and I’d love to tell you, but I can’t,” Piddick says. Like that does us any good.) The Scholastic folks already have a winner from their canvassing of 660,000 U.S. students, grades 1 through 12, and it’s a resounding landslide--Gore got schooled. Advantage: Bush.

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The New Hampshire Postulate: Since the primary system was put into place in 1952, no candidate who lost his party’s New Hampshire primary went on to take the Oval Office--until Clinton in 1992. But that’s the only blemish in an 11-1 record. Bush was routed by Arizona Sen. John McCain in New Hampshire this year, while Gore edged Bill Bradley. Advantage: Gore.

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The Retail Rule: Retailers love to see their names in the paper without paying for it, so across the country marketing people have been scratching their little noggins to find ways to cash in on the election.

Winchell’s has just started selling oversized, 99-cent doughnuts that represent Republicans (those are star-shaped), Democrats (bar-shaped) and undecided voters (your basic round). Results are due around Election Day.

At Helen Grace Chocolates, Bush jelly beans are outselling Gore jelly beans by about 3%, but then Republicans have owned the jelly bean bloc since the Reagan years. No matter what, we can confidently predict a sugar rush to the polls if this becomes a popular way to express your political views.

At 7-Eleven, Bush has already won the day. For the month of September, the convenience store offered their 20-ounce cups of coffee in containers that were marked either “Bush” or “Gore.” In that month they sold 1.24 million cups of coffee--gotta wash those jelly beans down with something--and Bush won in a squeaker, 21% to 20%. Why don’t those add up to 100%? Because 59% of voters opted for the third java option, the “don’t care/undecided” cup. “Some people may not want to walk into the office advertising their candidate of choice,” notes a 7-Eleven spokeswoman.

People may be shy about carrying a coffee cup endorsing a candidate, but all of us are honest when it comes to underwear, right? Banana Republic reports that $14 boxers emblazoned with Republican elephants are outselling the donkey variety by a healthy 6%, generally considered beyond the margin of error.

A company spokeswoman notes that the sales have mirrored the candidate popularity polls among male voters, but that doesn’t make sense to us because we usually see women buying boxers at Banana Republic. Either way, add up all the retail indicators and a pattern emerges. Advantage: Bush. But none of these really has a track record so you might as well be pulling numbers out of thin air. Which brings us to. . . .

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The Cosmic Math Axiom: Los Angeles numerologist Julian Michael says Election Day Nov. 7, 2000, brims with mathematical significance. “This day, my friend, it has to do with partnership, it has to do with illumination. It’s amazing. It vibrates to light, to truth. You have mastery all over the place here.”

Uh, OK.

The candidates themselves have some cosmic math too, if you analyze their birth dates, Michael says. Gore’s arrival on March 31, 1948, makes him a four, he says. (Don’t ask, it’s complicated.) “Four is like a box,” Michael tells us. “It’s square.”

Conversely, Bush was born July 6, 1946, giving him a destiny number of six. “His voice must be heard,” Michael says.

What does it all add up to? Advantage: Gore. Why? He “has a synergy with the election and these are extremely powerful numbers.”

The numbers don’t lie, so with supreme confidence we can now tell you the result of this year’s election. According to our 10 extremely scientific predictors, the presidential race will end . . . in a tie.