My Yard Sign Observations of the 2014 Election Cycle

Now that we are ramping up the BS for this election cycle, the yard signs are spreading through the neighborhood lawns faster than dandelions do in the spring. I personally find them annoying on many levels. Some day I will do my stunt I mentioned a few years ago here.

Today I made a drive through some scenic areas along the St. Croix River Valley and two things regarding the political yard sign I noticed. The first is something that may confirm my ideas of how people with similar political views tend to live in a particular town or neighborhood.

A town or area that is more industrial or business oriented, requiring skilled or semi-skilled labor tends to be more conservative. And a town or area that is more service industry oriented with craft stores, hotels, restaurants and other service businesses catering more  to tourist and entertainment seekers are usually more liberal.

On my drive today the towns that have well developed industrial parks and office centers seemed to have more yard signs for the Republican candidates and the towns that had more craft stores, speciality shops, and touristy restaurants predominantly had signs for Democratic candidates displayed.

That was not meant to be a knock or put down on anyone, just an observation that, when I think about it makes sense to me. People who have industrialist or production type careers tend to have conservative views and people who have more of a service or artistic career tend to be more liberal.

The other thing I ended up paying attention to on my little trip today was how many signs were in a person's front lawn. If a saw a yard that had one sign, maybe two. It projected the message of "the person who lives here likes this particular candidate." Especially if the campaign sign was for a local or county office.

The houses that had every single candidate from local to federal campaigns lined up all from one political party, it shouted an entirely different message to me. It screamed "the person who lives here is a proud member of a political party. This person refuses to think for themselves and will vote down the party line accordingly per the script provided to them by the party, a union, or lobbyist group. This person blames all problems on the other party for their wrongful views and agenda, and that party's refusal to compromise by agreeing on everything my favorite party proposes."

That was meant to be a knock or put down on everyone who always votes along party lines. Your refusal to think on yourself, research the candidates and for the ones best for the job, regardless of political party is why we have career politicians and we our democratic republic now more resembles an oligarchy.


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