A Totally Unscientific Survey

I live in Fairfield County, Connecticut. It is a suburban area with a large number of people who work in the financial industry both locally and on Wall Street. There are also large numbers of professionals like lawyers and doctors, etc. Other than that, it is an area typical of affluent suburbs across the country. Four years ago, the roads were a sea of Obama bumper stickers and lawn signs. Everywhere one went, the Obama signs were there as well. McCain stickers or signs could be found on occasion, but they were outnumbered at least by 50 to 1.

This morning, I decided to count Romney and Obama signs around town as I finished various errands. I counted 18 lawn signs and 13 bumper stickers regarding the presidential race. Amazingly, 17 of the 18 lawn signs were supporting Romney and all but one bumper sticker also supported Romney. In truth, I think I saw more Romney signs today than the number of McCain signs that I saw through the entire 2008 election. Even more telling, the one Obama bumper sticker was for the Obama 2008 campaign and it was peeling off the car. Even more interesting, included in my travels was a visit to Whole Foods. In 2008, the Whole Foods lot was like Obama central. I joked to a friend that one could only park at Whole Foods if one had an Obama sticker. Today, there was not a single Obama sticker in the entire lot.

One other thing I noted: there were lawn signs for Chris Murphy, the Democrat running for the senate, but these were outnumbered by signs for Linda McMahon, the GOP candidate. There were also signs for the various candidates for state senate and the lower house of the legislature as well. There just were no Obama signs.

Now, I am not interpreting this change from 2008 as a sign that Connecticut is going to vote for Romney. We will have to wait for election day to see if that miracle occurs. What this means, however, is that around here, at least, folks seem embarrassed to show support for Obama and the contrary is true for the Romney-Ryan ticket. Michael Barone is out today with a column in which he discusses a swing towards the GOP ticket in affluent suburbs across the Northeast and Midwest. To the extent my unscientific survey means anything, it supports what Barone says the polls are indicating.