Election day on the sports page?

In an astonishingly credulous piece on the front page of the sports section of today's Washington post is a chart that correlates the pre-election day Washington Redskins game results to the outcome of the presidential election. The caption reads: In 16 of the 17 presidential elections since the Redskins moved to Washington in 1937, the incumbent party has kept the White House when the Redskins won their final home game before the election. The lone exception: President Bush's victory over Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

But I have to ask, what's the point? Is there any reason to expect any sort of causal relationship here? I certainly can't think of any plausible reason why these two sets of results have any meaningful causal relationship. While they have correlated amazingly well, it strikes me as a case of finding patterns because we want them to be there. Note for example, that the football results are the last home game results rather than the last game prior to the election. How does the pattern change if we use the road games instead of the home games? But nothing in the chart in the paper even hints at these questions, but leaves it up to the reader to figure out on their own.

For the record, this year's last home game before the election was last night's loss to the Steelers.

Mid-day voting

One advantage of living close to where I work is that, when necessary, I can pop home during the day to take care of things that need to be done. Given the projections for long lines at the polls this morning and again in the evening, I suggested that my wife pick me up during the middle of the day. We'd vote, and then grab a bite of lunch before she deposited me back at my office. It worked like a charm.

When we pulled up at our polling place, there were a few cars around, but no sign of a crowd. The check-in table had a line of about a half-dozen people with names starting with A-G, but the H-O line where my name falls was vacant, so it was a breeze to check in. I was then directed to the end of the line of a dozen or so waiting to use the electronic, touch-screen voting machines. Here I was given a choice of waiting in line for a machine, or taking an optical scan sheet ballot and using any of about a dozen empty booths to fill it out. That was a no-brainer. I took the ballot and the pen they offered, found a booth and filled in the appropriate bubbles. I fed the ballot into the scanning machine, and I was finished.

Even with lunch, I was only gone from the office for a total of one hour. If I had waited until this evening, I bet the wait to check in would have been longer than that...