Don’t pay much attention to the primaries

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed that… Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed that the election season is finally entering full swing. With different winners in each early contest so far and no clear favorites among voters, speculation and campaigning has ramped up to levels bordering on the obscene.

Which I think is funny, because if there’s one thing that the primary season in general has taught us during years past, it’s that it’s really almost impossible to tell who will win an actual general election based on the results from two states, and especially with states as completely not representative of the actual American population.

For example, take a look at this recent CNN headline that I picked up while researching: “Clinton, Obama set to battle while GOP race remains wide open.”

Boy, I sure feel informed now. I can just picture the CNN news writers saying, “Well, we need to write something!” and then throwing their hands up in exasperation at the almost total lack of actual results anyone has gained from the past several weeks.

Don’t believe me? Look at it this way: Every race so far has been won by a different candidate, none of the races are indicative of actual preference among the majority of American voters, and on the Republican side Giuliani hasn’t even really started campaigning yet. It’s kind of like trying to pick the winning horse in a race by watching them all stand in their stalls and bite each other.

But the thing is, this doesn’t stop anyone. I’ve seen dozens of different blogs and opinions on who would make the best ticket for either side, who would be good in the Cabinet, who would beat whom in which match up, etc.

Even the aforementioned CNN article can’t help itself from comparing percentages and delegate counts in a special counter system, as far as I can tell, based just as much off of guesswork and voodoo as any sort of political information or, heaven forbid, actual fact.

Even the candidates themselves are getting ahead of themselves. McCain, although refusing to call himself a “kid” by any standard – probably a safe bet – said that he certainly believed he showed his opponents what a comeback looked like, even though Giuliani, one of McCain’s most powerful competitors, won almost 10 percent of the total vote without campaigning at all.

And Clinton supporters gave her the same “Comeback Kid” moniker despite a win of not even three full percentage points and the fact that she lost just as many New Hampshire counties as she won.

Her election aides said her victory may have been down to a moment on Monday where she appeared close to tears when discussing the primaries and public service, which is funny because up until Tuesday night all the pollsters were saying that it might have hurt her campaign.

Indeed, if there’s one thing that stands out clearer than anything else in the New Hampshire race it was that polls are sometimes about as accurate as the Weekly World News.

Considering that they gave Obama as much as a nine-point lead up until the evening of the voting, probably quite a lot of them are either re-examining their statistical models or looking up the definition of “margin of error.”

Of course, the primaries also traditionally allow the U.S. electorate to observe the campaign strategies and early promises of most of the candidates, except in this election where pretty much every candidate seems to be touting the same values of “Change.” Personally, I think this is a pretty obvious position; you aren’t going to find much support for the status quo in this election (campaign slogan: “Things Could Be Worse”).

So we’re left to pick which version of universal health care we want, or which Iraq exit strategy we prefer.

Sure there are obvious and substantial differences between the candidates themselves, but their platforms all seem remarkably