Who's winning the yard sign/bumper sticker war in your neck of the woods?

Obama! Everywhere!

I live in the bright blue spot in a very red state though. Virginia.

Ron Paul

Obama on every yard sign. Only saw one McCain sticker and that was on a hummer.
Seriously!

Tons of Obama stuff. Not a single sign or sticker for McCain. I don’t think McCain is even going to try in Eugene.

In my college town, Obama seems to be in the lead, followed by Ron Paul. I’ve seen 2 McCain stickers, and one person wrote “OBOMA SUCKS [sic]” in shoe polish on their Mustang.

Should have asked people to put where they’re from as well, though some already did. Thanks.

Wisconsin, which is supposed to be undecided.

Obama. However, I still see lots of Ron Paul signs and stickers all over. Even many new ones. I guess people are slowly catching on to the fact that he has been talking about a financial collapse for many years now, not just admitting there is one now like the other 2 guys.

Virginia is very likely to flip from red to blue this year asmonet!

McCain——Ugh!

Women for McCain, Families for McCain, Veterans for McCain.

Here’s the deal, I’m in a 75% republican county and my village is an exact model of those numbers here. So the rest of us band together for obtaining signs/fundraising and getting our view point heard at local meetings.

I take long walks and I’m lucky to see one Obama sign.

That’s okay. As soon as mine arrives I’ll shine a spot light on it at night =)

~Spatzie’s in Waukesha County, WIS

Im from NJ.

@ Spatzie….there’s another reason not to go to Waukesha. First one is, I always get lost.

what a glorious day that will be. at least for me. =)

In LA. I’ve only seen one McCain sticker, and no yard signs.

I live in a VERY conservative county in California, and I see more McCain stuff than Obama. I will say, however, that I have seen far more bumper stickers and signs for Democrats (in local elections, too) than ever before.

In Sacramento the most prevalent lawn signs are Obama for President and No on Proposition 8.

I have yet to see a single McCain yard sign. There should be some but I guess I am not looking closely enough! :D

I live in the middle of Madison, and it’s blanketed with Obama. I should probably leave the city and go campaigning in the northern part of the state, but I’m think I’ll stay in my bubble for now.

Here in Tennessee McCain is going to take it. There’s still a ton of W stickers on a bunch of the cars around here. I’m actually seeing a fair amount of McCain/Palin bumper stickers and almost no Obama. There’s still a fair amount of racism here in this state. It’s terrible.

As strange as it might sound since I live in Palin country, Wasilla, I’ve yet to see a McCain-Palin sign anywhere. I’ve seen three pro-Palin signs, two at the same biz, but that’s about it as far as support goes. That said, about the same number of Obama-Biden signs, so we’re equal opportunity apathetic, I guess. Actually, if I had to determine the most popular politician here in Alaska based on signs, it’d be Ted Stevens, hands down. Never mind the guy has been indicted for possible corruption and is on trial, there are Stevens signs everywhere. There are surely campaign signs in Anchorage, that’s big city turf, but not much out here in the Mat-Su Valley.

I’m in the Los Angeles area, where the Obama stickers are much more prevalent than the McCain stickers. I took a car trip from here to the San Francisco Bay area the end of August, and it was interesting to see how Obama stickers seriously outnumbered McCain stickers here and in the SF area, but there were more McCain stickers in the Central Valley. That was about what I would have expected.

However, I must say that I have not seen as many bumper stickers as I normally see this close to an election. I definitely saw more in 2004 and 2000. Does that mean we’re more apathetic, or just sick of this long, long campaign? Or that there is an overriding gloom in people’s outlooks because of the economy? Who knows?

I think some of it is by design. I wish I’d bookmarked the article but didn’t, but read a story last night about yard signs. The basic story line was that neither campaign is focusing on them much because they’ve found over the years that those with yard signs often don’t contribute anything else to the campaign. They’re less likely to sign up to canvas or volunteer in any other way, figuring the presence of a yard sign in their yard is doing their part. Not sure I agree with the idea that a yard sign isn’t of much value but found some food for thought in the story, anyway. If I run across it again, I’ll come back and post the link.

The Obama website has a link to various signs/labels/buttons and such that supporters can download and print on their own. http://www.barackobama.com/downloads/ I’m assuming the McCain site has the same thing but don’t have a direct link to it, so you’re on your own there.

I’ve been counting for the past week or so. 145 Obama, 6 McCain. Bergen County, NJ.

Wayzata, MN…hardly any national race signs. LOTS of Franken, not so many Coleman. Woo hoo!

Obama. No McCain. Philadelphia.

Sadly, McCain, then Ron Paul. West (byGod) Virginia. I’ve seen just a few Obama bumper stickers here.

Obama, Obama, Obama. I have seen a few McCain stickers, but very few.

Lots of Obama, almost no McCain, and one guy who spray painted his whole car for McKinney (that’s the Green Party for those who don’t recognize the name). The funny thing was that he was in an ancient and giant gas-guzzler.

People know that Ron Paul dropped out, right?

To answer the question, Obama is currently winning here in Columbus, but McCain is quickly catching up. Bad thing is, we’re out of signs at our HQ and people keep asking for them. Chicago owes me several thousand signs, and then we’ll be in the lead again.

Well, slap my fanny!

Obama signs were delivered down my road last night and now there are 10 !!!!

McCain stickers, posters and yard signs….the eastern shore of Maryland is a sad, sad place to be. We’re pretty much a red area in a blue state.

A very blue state…no Republican pres. candidate stands a chance there.

I’m in Seattle. I’ve seen a lot of Obama everywhere and a few bumper stickers for McCain on some really sad looking cars.

Today on my way home from work I saw:

4 Obama or Obama/Biden bumper stickers
0 McCain or McCain/Palin bumpers stickers

and I shit you not, one James K. Polk bumper sticker!

Frickin’ James K. Polk is doing better in Minnesota than John McCain! Hahahahahaaha.

Okaaaaeeeee. Was it a really really old buggy? LOL!

No, a brand new car, driven by someone with a damn good sense of humor I guess.

The top said “For President 1844”. Line 2 said in the largest type face “James K. Polk”, and the third line said “Manifest Destiny”

I love that. How funny!

Obama. I saw one McCain/Palin bumper sticker the other day, though.

Durham, NC. NC may go blue this year!

I’ve been wearing an Obama shirt for over a year and signs have been up at least that long-San Francisco-I haven’t seen any McCain signs but occasionally you see a Bush/Cheyney bumper sticker heading north to Marin County.

I just came home from the grocery here in Wasilla and saw an interesting jacket while I was there on a young man, teen, really. It was a letterman type jacket, but with a hood. I could read “McCain-Palin 2008” on the lower back, then was able to move around close enough to see that it said “Sarah Barracuda” above that and had some sorta graphic. Couldn’t tell what that one was, tho, cos the hood was down over the back covering it. Definitely not something you’d expect to see on the common supporter but didn’t recognize anyone in the group, either, tho’ I know Todd is in town right now. In any case, this was my only real encounter so far with anything Palin other than the 2–3 signs I’d seen earlier.

I live in Minneapolis, a liberal city in a left leaning state. That said, it’s mostly Obama stickers and lawn signs. But the further I head into the suburbs, the more McCain material I see.

I finally saw a McCain sticker yesterday. But that same day I also saw a W04 sticker, a Ron Paul sticker and 6 Obama stickers.

I had my first sighting of a “McCain-Palin” sign yesterday afternoon, so if you count the jacket I talk about above, that’s two so far here in Wasilla.

BTW, off topic, but it’s snowing! 3” or so on the ground and big fluffy flakes still falling, so to get back on topic, that sign will be snow covered now. How’s that for working to make a comment fit? Ha

For a long time we had one Obama sign on our street. As of today we now have one McCain/Palin sign, so we are tied.

We got snow in 1984 but it didn’t stick, and then again in 2004, when it stuck for a day. I doubt either of these signs will be hidden by snow any time soon.

Just did a count of bumper stickers and yard signs as we drove through and rode bikes through Newport Beach California, probably some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Count? 4 McCain 11 Obama.

How did you know I was out cruising the neighborhood looking at signs today, Judi, and revive this question? Ha I am beginning to see a few more McCain-Palin signs, but would say there are more Begich and/or Stevens signs than anything else around. Even some of the businesses that are clearly supporting Democrat Begich, tho’, don’t have Obama signs but after hearing a couple stories of folks being threatened that had them, can’t say that I blame ‘em. This whole thing is so out of hand. There was an Obama rally in Anchorage today, I think. Haven’t confirmed it, but heard there were about 1000 people in attendance on a VERY cold (mid-20’s tops) day. I need to check around for more info, tho’.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a reverse Bradley Effect and Alaska went for Obama?

Alaska, no. But Georgia will, mark my words. North Dakota and Montana are likely. West Va is not out of the question. Arkansas is a possibility. And Arizona, which hasn’t been polled in several weeks if not months, shows McCain +4…McCain could lose his HOME STATE. Alaska though, it’s just too far for a reverse Bradley effect to be feasible.

Well the largest newspaper in Alaska has endorsed Obama

And if anyone read newspapers anymore, I’d think that might be enough to pu thim over the top. Of course, if Stevens is convicted, anything is possible.

I saw a bumper sticker I loved the other day: “Republicans for Voldemort” :^>

Virginia is blue! It fucking happened!

So far.

Republicans for Voldemort is my favorite bumper sticker ever. All my friends have it. :D We’re nerdz.

Im Ignoant. What/who is Voldemort.

Harry Potter reference. I’ve seen a few of those around here in Memphis.

Voldemort

I guess I can google myself:
Above all else, Voldemort desires power. That desire is what drove him to the Dark Arts, and thence to evil. His name has been feared above all others for many years, even after he was almost destroyed trying to kill Harry still most people feared to even speak the name of Voldemort. He will do anything to gain mastery over others, including torture and murder. It’s hard to say if he now enjoys these things, but it would seem so, and he has shown his twisted path to some of his most trusted followers.

Voldemort has gone through so many terrible transformations he is barely recognisable as a human being, and very nearly isn’t human at all. His magic protections sufficed to grant him a wraithlike existence after he failed to kill Harry, and he only gained flesh by posessing Professor Quirrell in order to gain the lifegiving powers of the Philosopher’s Stone. In this period he was still forced to drink the blood of unicorns to live, and in doing so damned himself yet further. When Peter Pettigrew emerged from hiding and fled to Voldemort’s side, the Dark Lord was already regaining his strength, but the ritual which required the kidnapping of Harry Potter for the blood of the enemy restored Voldemort to his full powers.

Fortunately for all, Harry escaped death at Voldemort’s hands yet again and returned to warn Dumbledore of the Dark Lord’s return. The speed with which Dumbledore was able to react gained Voldemort’s enemies a valuable advantage and the Order of the Phoenix was able to reconvene and begin countering his plans almost immediately. Hampered by the Ministry of Magic’s refusal to admit Voldemort’s return, they are nonetheless proving quite capable of generating serious resistance to his resurgence.

JUDI GOOGLE. EDUCATE YOURSELF ON THE TOPIC OF AWESOME.

Oh, you already did. ahem.

asmonet, not only is CNN showing a blue VA, but so is 538 and Pollster (and Real Clear Politics has it light blue, but they show the average polls up by over 7, so it’s close to going dark blue there as well). Of course, we’re not out of the woods yet, if McCain can keep from losing any more of his safe states, can keep his barely leaning states (SD and AZ) from going blue, win all the tossup states (NV, MT, ND, MO, IN, NC, GA, and FL), and turn all the states leaning to Obama by less than 6 points back to red in the next 8 days (NH, OH, CO and NM), he can still win 270 to 268 (unless one of Nebraska’s congressional districts goes to Obama, that is). So, all he has to do is win all 14 of those states and the ones we’re pretty sure he’s got a good chance of winning and he can still pull it out. Obama on the other hand can pick any single one of those 14 states and win the election at this point. America is blue!

@dalepetrie: I’d grab you and kiss youe in a terrible 80s movie way if I could. Thanks for the info!

yay politics

Alaska’s Sen. Ted Stevens was just found guilty on all seven counts of lying about gifts/financial disclosure. I’m going to be curious to see if the Stevens campaign signs stay or go.

@asmonet – if I were 15 years younger, not married and a couple thousand miles further east, I’d have to take you up on that. I’ve never been kissed in a terrible 80s movie way, not even when I was growing up in the 80s!

@dalepetrie: You missed out foo’! It’s pretty awesome. You gotta grab the lapel and pull. It’s all about the lapel.

And sometimes it’s all about overstated goofy gender roles. I’m the girl, I get to kick my foot up and swoon!

I suggest you practice on your wife, post-haste! You know, while I pine away or some shit.

:D

adding insult to injury…she has strep…not happening any time soon!

You receive no snaps. The universe has pwned you. How upsetting.

You know the option still remains, you’re just gonna suffer for it. Like every audience in the eighties did in hindsight.

ah, John Hughes…where are you when I need you?

Wow, this from the Alaskan Republican Party today after hearing of the Stevens’ conviction: “We need to continue to support Sen. Stevens. We need to vote for him because a vote for him is a vote for a conservative candidate, a Republican who best represents the interests and beliefs of Alaskans. … We don’t know what happens in the future. But if you don’t want Mark Begich, you vote for Ted Stevens.” – McHugh Pierre, spokesman for the Alaska Republican Party.”

I’m sure hoping it was somehow taken out of context or is a joke but….

Of course it’s not a joke. Stevens loss brings Dems one closer to a 60 seat supermajority in the Senate. If Stevens isn’t dropping out, they have no choice but to support him, lest the Dems get a chance to do what the Republicans did from 2002–2006. Payback’s a bitch and they know it.

Update: Now that Virginia is blue, I’m seeing a lot of people stealing McCain/Palin signs and replacing them with Obama/Biden…like, right out in the open. Is this happening near anyone else?

I don’t know if anyone is still following this question, but I had one more interesting observation regarding bumper stickers this morning.

On my way to work I saw a car with an Obama ‘08 bumper sticker on the left side of the bumper, and a McCain/Palin bumper sticker on the right side of the bumper.

WTF?

First off, it wasn’t an Obama/Biden sticker…it was indeed the same sticker I got BEFORE the Iowa caucus.

This leads me to believe one of two things:

1) The person liked Obama in the beginning, but unlike what the rest of the country did (i.e. they were not sure but over several months came to trust him enough to elect him), this person instead decided against Obama later on. Rather than cover up the old bumper sticker or try to remove it, risking paint damage, they just put it on the other side, or

2) A couple owns the car, the driver is an Obama supporter and the passenger is a McCain supporter.

Either that or a schizophrenic is driving that thing.

Or.. Left – liberals? Right – conservatives?Although that seems dumb, no one needs help knowing that. I like your second idea about the driver and the passenger.

The 2nd idea somehow just feels more correct. Could be one of those situations where she wanted to vote for a woman and when Hillary was out and Palin was in, that’s all it took? Who knows, but it short circuited my brain for a few seconds there!

@dalepetrie: But the woman is more commonly the driver, and the male is more commonly the passenger, so wouldn’t the bumper stickers be reversed if your hypothesis is true?

Maybe it’s a shared car.

@girlofscience – Well, this would assume that the male is the primary driver of that car, of course, kind of just threw that possibility out there without really trying to hypothesize about how often each sex is a passenger vs. driver. Even if what you say is 100% accurate (something I dispute…see below), certainly I think there’s more than one American couple out there who would fall under the category I described, AND have at least one car where he was the primary driver whenever they drove together.

But to take on your hypothesis that the woman is more commonly the driver (not to be combative and contrarian…I’m just really curious), I question what you base that on? Do you have any data to support this, or is this based on your experience. The reason I ask is because in my personal experience, whenever I go anwhere with my wife and/or son, I drive about 95% of the time. I also know this to be the case with pretty much every couple I know. And if you look at any movie where there is a couple or family driving, I think you’d be VERY hard pressed to even find examples where the woman drives. It seems popular culture makes the assumption that the male is the driver, and I would suspect that is a reflection of societal norms. Now, like I said, I PERSONALLY was not making that assumption above, and I’m no chauvinist, I’m never surprised to see the man get out of the passenger seat, it just isn’t the experience I see reflected around me, so I find your statement to be quite surprising, though I’m not saying it’s “wrong”, just looking for what you base that one since your perception seems so wildly different than my own.

@dalepetrie: Haha, I could very well be wrong. It is only based on personal experiences.

Of the couples I know (and go places with, and have seen positioning in their cars), the female is most frequently the driver. I think this may be because I flock with assertive females who are more likely to be the ones determining a destination or having knowledge of the destination’s location.

Also, in all of the couples I know (under 40), the female makes significantly more money than the male. I realize this is not the norm, so I think my assumption may have simply been biased by my immediate social group.

The woman making more than the man, on average, if not already the case, will become the case within the next decade.

@daloon: Why is that the case? Enhanced organizational abilities and ambition in women?

I’m not sure of that one daloon, there is always the structural advantage men have by not having to be the ones who bear children. I’m not saying wage disparity is 100% the result of women having to take off time to have babies, but I think there is some core component of that which is going to make that hurdle pretty high. I think there is also another built in component about cultural mores in a global economy. I have to imagine there are going to be a number of bass ackwards countries where women don’t even yet have the right to uncover their faces in public which will become increasingly larger players in the global economy, and I suspect that will lead in no small part to a reluctance on the part of Board of Directors in large, multi-national organizations, sending women to the highest echylons of leadership. Yes, Hillary Clinton may have put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling as it were, but I somehow doubt that’s going to cause a complete and total reversal in the economic hierarchy that has been in place for the whole of human history…there are too many disadvantages built in for women to (on average) overcome withhin the next decade. But if they can do it, I say rock on sister.

I kind of suspected your personal experience varied from mine, GOS…seems a very plausible reason for your assumption, I just don’t think it holds in the country as a whole. Not even a question I ever would have thought to ask though.

I can’t remember where I heard this, perhaps on NPR. There was a whole piece on how women now make up maybe 53% of college students. Men can’t cut the mustard, anymore, academically speaking.

I also believe that women now make up close to 50% of the workforce. It’s hard to tell because everyone talks about labor participation rates, not total employment.

It’s true that the glass ceiling hasn’t been cracked yet, but demographically speaking it has to happen. There just won’t be enough men around to band together to keep women out.

Anyway, if women are smarter, and they do more work, it can’t be long before it becomes a standard that in couples, women make more than the men. Again, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is nearly already the case. I know the wage gap has been coming down. I remember that ten or twenty years ago, women made something like 63 cents for every dollar a man made.

Lately I’ve heard the number is up in the high 70s. Having a few men make horrendous amounts of money could skew the figures, and perhaps in a majority of couples, women make more than men.

The trends, should they continue, will end with women being the “breadwinners” not too far in the future. Certainly less than fifty years, which is a drop in the bucket in terms of the amount of time humans have been around.

I’m sure all that is true, but I’m still skeptical if it will flip like that, just because of as I said the structural barriers that will exist no matter how “enlightened” we become or no matter how much better educated the pool of women becomes. Jobs will always gor more to the people who are willing to make the biggest commitment to them, and you’re going to find that your best paying jobs are also the ones that require the people in them to put home second to work, and there will always be far fewer women willing to do that than there will be men. But time will tell.

daloon, I want to say that I heard that report too. There’s also something else about women only making up 10% of the homeless.

Frankly, dale, I’m more worried about males, particularly boys in our society. But I’ve said more than enough about that on another thread here.

I don’t buy your argument about men being willing to make more of a commitment to jobs. Have you been around a law firm lately? Women who want to succeed believe they have to be twice as good as a man, and they seem to be willing to put in the hours to do that.

I believe (but don’t have data to support) that more and more, men have higher rates of unemployment, and remain unemployed longer, because they don’t have enough education for today’s jobs.

I fear the feminization of education most, because as teachers cater more to girls, they will demand that boys be more like girls. To the extent that boys cannot be like girls, they will be marginalized in education, and will drop out at much higher rates than girls. I would not be at all surprised if this turns out to be a significant factor in the feminization of higher education.

Demographic change is kind of like turning a supertanker. You start to turn long before you need to, and you finish turning long before the turn is done. The changes that are appearing now have been in the works for decades. Women, I believe, have gotten what they wanted; they just don’t know it yet.

OMG – has this gotten off topic!

daloon,

I think you have to make sure you understand how I’m parsing my words.

I’m not saying that men are willing to make more of a commitment to jobs.

I’m saying MORE men (as a percentage of all men) are willing to make that level of commitment than women (as a percentage of all women). There are plenty of overly ambitious people of both sexes, it just tends to be that until men can carry babies (and I’m not talking about that woman who had a sex change but kept her uterus), more women will make a greater commitment to family than work than men. It’s basic human nature, everything you said notwithstanding. As long as the almighty dollar reigns supreme, the captains of industry are going to rely most heavily on the people willing to mske the greatest sacrifice, and even if we end up where women are better educated by a 60/40 margin, I have to believe the # of people willing to put in 100 hour weeks to climb the corporate ladder will be at least 70/30 men/women, which is going to mean that on “average” men are going to continue to be more highly compensated. Just my opinion, I could be wrong and won’t be at all upset if I am, I just want to make sure you understand my point is not that there aren’t a huge and growing # of ambitious women, I just think structurally women’s ambitions will come from different motivating factors.