Monday, November 07, 2016

Campaign collectibles from a calmer time: Barack Obama, John McCain and the most-accurate poll


I don't place a lot of faith in polls these days, unless they are conducted by a hockey team with bobble heads.

Today's campaign collectibles from a calmer time brings us to my favorite hockey team -- the Grand Rapids Griffins -- and the 2008 election.

The Saturday before the election, the team conducted a "Bobble the Vote" promotion, allowing fans to pick a bobble of the candidate of their choice.

These bobbles are cool, depicting Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain in Griffins sweaters. The team promised to announce which of the bobble heads was the most popular by the end of the game.

All 1,000 of the Obama bobble heads were claimed, and there were 102 McCain bobbles left over.

That gave the Illinois senator 52.7 percent of the vote, with the Arizona senator 47.3 percent.

On Election Day that year, Obama earned 52.4 percent of the popular vote, and McCain earned 46.3 percent.

That's pretty close, giving the Griffins one of the most accurate polls of the campaign season.

There's a chance I skewed the results slightly. Naturally I wanted one of each of these awesome collectibles, so I brought my son to the game. I picked up a McCain and Andrew was instructed to snag an Obama.

Kudos to the Griffins for both the cool campaign items and a pretty accurate poll. Alas, the team didn't repeat the promotion this year, so you'll have to wait until Tuesday night to learn the winner.

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