I hate polls. I hate to hear the latest update on how people feel today. Bush up by two. Next day Kerry up by ten points. Next day Bush closing the gap to five points. It is all phony hype that feeds itself. It is based on the fatal attraction for people to think that their individual opinion is important, but it ends up in a feedback loop that influences the very individual opinions it purports to measure. In that respect, it resembles the the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in that publishing the results of polls changes people’s opinions.

So, I avoid polls on principle. I refuse to take part in them, and I try to pay little attention to them.

But, I have decided to play a little poll-like game. I’m going to count the presidential campaign signs on the path I run five times a week to measure how the support for the candidates is changing over time. Here are the rules: rather than count the number of signs, I will count the houses that have one or more signs. No matter how many signs they put on their property, it still only counts as one. I will only count the houses I actually run by. I will not look up and down side streets. I also will only count signs at houses.

I live in a heavily Democratic neighborhood. I have in the past joked that if Adolph Hitler (D) was running against Mother Teresa (R) for local dog-catcher, Hitler (D) would win in a landslide, just because of the (D) after his name.

The overwhelming number of Democrats in the area could work one of two ways for our little sign counting game: 1) There could be lots more Kerry signs than Bush signs because of all the Democrats in the neighborhood or 2) There could be less Kerry signs than Bush because all the Democrats knows the support is so strong there isn’t any point in displaying signs, but the lonely, obstinate Republicans want to let everyone know everyone isn’t for Kerry.

Well, here are the results so far.

As you can see, we have had many new signs in the last couple of days, but still far fewer Kerry signs than I expected to see. Perhaps everyone is waiting for the debates before they put up their signs. Or, perhaps they, like me, refuse to put up any sign because they don’t want to be associated with either of these candidates. But right now, it is a landslide for Bush.