Analyst: Gore Wins 2008 in a Landslide

Who knows if this new technique even makes sense, but given what it purports to measure, this outcome is highly interesting. An outfit called Media Psychology Affiliates applied "a new research tool called Affective Encryption Analysis," to figure out the likely outcome of the 2008 Presidential election.

The results showed that even with widespread disaffection with The Big Smirk in the White House, most Democrats didn't get a much better reaction. Specifically, the study found that all Democratic candidates tested, including Hillary Clinton, would likely be defeated by a Republican. With one exception.

With a predictive accuracy of 93%, our results showed that Al Gore would easily defeat any Republican challenger in 2008. However, he is the only Democrat on the scene today who has the ability to defeat the likely Republican challengers, who we believe will be either John McCain or Jeb Bush.”

The interesting aspect of this outcome concerns what the analysis measures: not positions on issues, but emotional responses. "Affective Encryption Analysis is a new behavior forecasting tool that looks at how our feelings and emotions can influence our long-term actions,” explains Dr. Herndon. “Traditional survey techniques are not very good at predicting trends. Affective Encryption Analysis was developed to dig deeper into the emotional factors that control our future behaviors.”

The irony of course is that back in 2000, the rap on Gore was that he wasn't likeable, that people didn't have a strong positive feeling about him. Despite that, he won the popular vote and was demonstrably cheated out of the office to which the American people voted him, with the disastrous results we see every minute today, and which we will be paying for in many ways for many many years.

Now Gore is winning on feeling. As a predictive tool, this may well be dubious. But it does suggest that the Gore boomlet now happening has some powerful sources beyond policy.