>I watched CNN last night and they had an interview with a professor at Emory who studied how people vote in the U.S. It turns out that the majority of Americans study some of the issues (the ones they care about most) but always vote by their gut and emotion. If their gut or emotion leans toward one candidate while another candidate actually has policies they agree with, they will vote with their emotion pretty much every time. That was very disheartening to listen to.

While I also think the brain is a tool not used enough at election time, going by your guts has some positive points.

Consider:
In the last state level election here (Hessen) it was clear from start that the ruling conservative would loose so much they'd have to build a coalition. The second largest party (social democrats) were PO'd by the leading guy saying before election day they did not want a grand coalition. But even stronger the lead woman uttered on many occasions a coaltion with the communist party (mostly former SED with some fringe west nuts and dishartend socialists) would NOT happen. After election day: she treis she flips over and argues for a green/red/deep red coalition made mathmatically possibe by 1 seat. Did not happen because one of the elected socialists openly declared not to vote for such a coalition.

This would have been the first time communists ruling at state level in the former west (Berlin is a special nut case...), the actual seat distribution /coalition options were (at least for me) very probable. My point is that on scenarios I can build as probable, but where no real data is available, deciding "by gut" gives me better results than analyzing ad extremum (for instance to fomulate probabilities).

And we both know that "gut and emotion" is probably a very misleading description.

regards

thomas