We're into the Spin Cycle

Tired of all the polling and want the whole mess to be over with? Me too. There are several very unscientific measures of who will win on Tuesday, but which are much more fun -- and maybe just as accurate.

* Jones Soda has sold 14,000 bottles of Yes We Can Cola and only 3,500 bottles of Pure McCain Cola, which is less than the 6,000 bottles of the Ron Paul Revolution Cola. I wonder of the three varieties taste the same?

* 7-Eleven offers presidential cups and the blue Obama cups are preferred to the red McCain cups 60% to 40%.

* Family Circle magazine asks candidate spouses for a favorite cookie recipe and then asks readers to vote for their preference. Cindy McCain's oatmeal butterscotch cookies got 54% of the vote over Michelle Obama's shortbread cookies, which got 44%. The outcome would have been quite different if either recipe included chocolate. Bill Clinton's oatmeal cookie got only 2%.

* Baskin Robbins says that the Whirl of Change ice cream gets 51% of the vote over the Straight Talk Crunch, at 49%. Both flavors contain nuts. Evidently, the other 29 flavors are not factored into the contest.

* If the Washington Redskins win their last home game before the election, the incumbent party stays in power. The game is tomorrow with the Redskins (6-2 record) playing the Steelers (5-2 record).

* KFC is selling t-shirts: the "Left Wing" shirt is chosen 41% of the time, the "Right Wing" at 29%, just behind the shirts with "Left Wing, Right Wing, Tastes the Same to Me" at 30%.

* The Scholastic magazine asks schoolchildren to vote for their preference. The kids have been right 15 times out of 17. They chose Obama 57% to McCain's 39%.

* The freshness test: Jonathan Rauch, senior writer at the National Journal, offers this test proposed by an anonymous government employee. Only once since early in the 20th Century has there been a president who has required more than 14 years to get from his first big elected office to the Oval Office. You do the math.