Political Wisdom from the Great Pumpkin

"There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin." Linus Van Pelt

Apparently, North Carolina does exit polls a little differently. They throw pumpkins. It's called "The Great Heads of Statesville Exit Poll" and you can read all about it on their blog. NCSL's The Thicket did a post about it this morning as well.

The pumpkins are painted with the faces of political candidates from the presidential race on down. They are tossed by a contraption called a "trebuchet", and the pumpkin candidates who land the farthest are declared the winners. I'm not sure how long they have predicted election outcomes using this method, but the organizers say their results are 80% accurate.

Last Friday, The Great Heads of Statesville Exit Poll was conducted and the pumpkins say that the McCain/Palin ticket is headed for the White House:

The McCain pumpkin spun to the right (of course) and landed at 81 yards. The Palin pumpkin veered left, but came back to the right and landed at 85 yards.

The Obama pumpkin went off to the left (again, of course) and landed at 79 yards. The Biden pumpkin also went left, and landed at 83 yards.

The pumpkin toss for North Carolina governor ended up in a tie at 86 yards each for Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory. Let's see if they actually end up in a tie.

It should be noted that there was a Hillary Clinton pumpkin, and they were going to toss it to see how far she would have gone, but the rain intervened.

Art work on the politicians' faces were done by local 7th and 8th graders.