Over at EightQuestions.info (my informal, fun, state of the culture survey site), I posted a poll about who’d win today if you voted. Among other interesting insights, John McCain was declared the winner. Fact or fiction? I’ll update you in November. Until then, here is the pulse of a small (43 people) sample of society.

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Ever wish you could get past all of the media and candidate hoopla and just know who will be President? Yeah, me too. So I thought I’d ask and what I found was a bunch of Republicans (56%) who are excited about voting for John McCain (61%). Read on to find out what the real hot issues are and if people would still vote on election day even if they didn’t know who they wanted or should vote for. Now that’s a good way of voting the new President in.

Let’s start with what political parties are represented by our participants. Over 56% were Republican; 9% were Democrat, 16% claimed to be independent and another 19% claimed “none.” Is none because you hate the establishment or because they never registered to vote? Who knows.

While I’ve watched and engaged in my own conversations about the issues of concern, it’s no surprise what ranked as the top issue for our respondents, the economy (79%). In all, I listed 17 different issues and asked each participant to select which issues played a role in their voting decision. Here are the top five:

• Economy (79%)
• Ethics (72%)
• Foreign Policy (67%)
• Faith (63%)
• War, Family (58%)

It’s interesting to note that Veterans (16%) and Technology (19%) were the least important issues to the participants.

The focus of this survey was to find out who people would vote for today. 61% said that they would vote for John McCain, 34% for Obama and only 5% for Hillary Clinton. As with any election, there is always a few write-ins. This survey had three people list Ron Paul as their candidate.

Something I found a bit disturbing is that 47% of the participants said they would still vote on decision day even if they were unable decide on one candidate. Maybe I should have followed up that question by asking if they would have just voted party lines? 26% did say that they wouldn’t vote at all and 28% said they didn’t know if they would or not. I’d just like to say, if you don’t know, do the research so you can be educated and informed.

Speaking of research, 81% of the participants said that research would be their main external influence in formulating their voting decision, followed by friends (40%), family (37%), media (33%), church (30%), parents/pastor/mentor (12%) and coworkers (5%). It appears that celebrities don’t have as much say as you’d expect. Not one of the participants cited them as an influence.

On the question of faith and their voting decision, 91% of participants declared that faith was a central influencer.

In the “sound off” box, we found one consistent comment, “I really don’t like any of the three.”

Based on this survey, it looks like John McCain is going to take this election by a long shot…that is if the remaining 47% of the population can make their decision before election day

• Male (58%), Female (42%)
• Median Age: 32
• 56% of participants were ages 25-34

I’m curious about your knowledge and observance of Good Friday and Easter. Would you mind taking this survey?

www.eightquestions.info