This just in...

“There is absolutely no correlation between the winners of local elections and the quantity or quality of the signs that were displayed on behalf of candidates”, reported the National Institute of Signology (NIS) today from its headquarters in Northfield, Minnesota. Dr. Jonathan Johnsmith, Executive Director of this totally fictitious think-tank, told reporters that the results of their 20-year study were irrefutable.

“We have collected and catalogued detailed sign data from from all 50 states for the last two decades,” said Dr. Johnsmith. “Our trained observers counted yard signs in more than 2,000 cities and towns from Portland, Maine to San Diego, California. We then compared our sign data to local election results. “There was absolutely no correlation,” Dr. Johnsmith reports. “Sign count is not a predictor of election results.”

The reason for this result, Johnsmith said, is that “what people are willing to say in public is often different than how a person votes in private when they enter the voting booth. Having a sign on your lawn can be a way of fitting in, of saying you are satisfied with groupthink. But, when it actually gets down to voting, people apparently are willing to exercise independent thinking.”  

“It makes sense to me,” said Eric J Lieberman, the Republican Candidate for State Representative from the 18th district in Illinois who this reporter selected totally at random from a phone book for Evanston, a suburb just north of Chicago. “I’d add one more reason for these results,” said Lieberman, who was endorsed by the Chicago Tribune. “I think some homeowners may gradually grow really angry at the politicians making sign holes in their front yards and the homeowners end up voting against them for revenge. That is why I have intentionally limited the number of signs I am placing.”

Lieberman added that there are many reported instances of Republican signs disappearing from Evanston lawns. “This could be due to one of two things: either alien sign abductions for ghastly genetic sign experiments, or thefts by gangsters that just don’t believe in democracy.”