Logos are the New Tea Leaves

Brand names have added diversity to our vocabularies for years -- think of new verbs like "google" as in "I googled that creep at the bar and it turns out he really does own a startup dog resort" -- but now advertising sages are using brand association data to help predict the election. Who needs tarot and astrology when you've got state-of-the-art psychographic data for political fortunetelling?

Among undecided voters: Kerry appears to have the advantage because undecided voters tend to associate him with certain brands based more on their positive than their negative attributes: Apple is "young" and "hip", Target offers "value for everyone", Starbuck's is "young" (but also "elite"), but on the negative side, BMW is "expensive"

The BMW association will turn out to be the most harmful for Kerry. The freeways of coastal Blue States are clogged with luxury German engineering, but the vast blanket of Middle America Red States find it hard to connect with the French-looking liberal Massachusetts senator schussing down the ski slopes of Sun Valley or windsurfing off the coast of Nantucket. While both candidates come from equally aristocratic backgrounds, Bush has the monopoly on down-home swagger and the plain talk that gives him such mass appeal.

Bush is associated with the positive attributes of established mainstay brands like Bud Light, IBM and Ford ("reliable", "humble", "heritage", "solid")....Samuel Adams is "trustworthy" and "patriotic"

Bush's association with a mantra used to avoid consumer options overload -- "Sam Adams, Always a Good Choice" -- may override the Kerry-Apple urge to "Think Different" in this election. Most consumers won't pore over a listing of two hundred imported beers, preferring the Sam Adams "good enough" option. Most voters won't seek the facts about the nonexistent connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda or our spiraling deficits. Voter laziness plus Kerry's dismal charisma factor equals most voters sticking with the status quo.