Over the last several weeks, I've become something of a presidential race junky.... reading polls, political blogs, junk editorials, really everything I can get my hands on. In many ways, this race is shaping up to be pretty standard; most states are easy to predict at this point in time, and in any case, it seems like outside of Ohio, none of the states really matter. But there are a few unique sub-stories this year, and none of them are more interesting than what is happening in the state of Virginia, worth a substantial 13 electoral votes.
Virginia is a mixed bag when it comes to classic divisions, right down the middle... democrat-republican, conservative-liberal, Union-Confederacy. There are four major urban areas, but they have small suburbs and a large percentage of the population is relatively rural. Unemployment is very low compared to the national average. Conventional wisdom would suggest that a healthy economy would improve the chances for the incumbent. However, Virginia is the only state out of 50% where most political scientists agree that a third party nominee could have a major effect on the race, and even possibly win.
Running officially as an independent, but unofficially as a candidate for the Simian Party, Aperaham Lincoln (I) offers a third option to voters tired of the limited choices offered by bipartisan politics. On nearly all of the major issues, he takes a controversial stance that makes him an extremely divisive figure:
+Government: On one hand, he advocates across-the-board restrictions to the size of government. On the other hand, while serving in the Senate, he wrote a Banana Welfare Act that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
+Women's rights: he thinks human women should have no rights whatsoever. He says the same about human men. In a surprise move intended to woo the woman vote, he selected Dr. Jane Goodall as his VP running-mate.
+He has less foreign policy experience than either other candidate, but polling shows that 60% of VI voters think he is "strong" in that area, possibly due to his extremely silver back-hair.
Polling information, by and large, is spotty to the extreme in VI. Telephone polling is completely useless due to a total lack of telephones in the state. Internet polling is untrustworthy, since an estimated 75% of unique internet connections in the state are operated by spam-bots. (By national law, spam-bots are not allowed to vote, but this is a whole other thing.) Door-to-door polling, therefore, is pretty much the only information we have coming out of the state. Early polling results showed a tight race, with Obama and Romney pretty much splitting the vote until mid-October. At this point, the Ape City Council officially endorsed Aperaham Lincoln, and independent polling was restricted. In Greater Metropolitan Ape City, all polling is done by the ACC, and outside of the capital, pollsters are shot on sight by bazooka-wielding ape-patrols. According to the most recent polling data, the Simian Party is expected to get 100% of the vote, margin for error 0.1%.
It would be easy to write Mr. Lincoln off as a fringe candidate, and therefore ignore questions like "Can an ape be president?" and "Is there room for a third party in American politics?" if not for the fact that Aperaham Lincoln also appears to be leading in South Dakota, Iowa, New Mexico, and Puerto Rico.