I just read that overall people would rather sit down and watch a football game with Barack Obama than John Mc Cain. Thanks to an Associated Press/Yahoo Poll we are now much more informed as voters and can make educated decisions come Election Day. I hasten to add that it was close – Barack sealed the deal by “barely the length of a football.” Wow - that close eh? Had me going!

Okay let’s break it down by gender, age, race, etc. Funnily enough, minorities, women, younger and unmarried people, would prefer kicking back with Obama, while men, whites and older people would prefer catching a game with Mc Cain. Who’d have thought!

One 29-year old Democrat from my home town of Asheville claimed, in an article on this groundbreaking discovery that he picked Obama because he believes ‘they have more in common.’ So I guess this guy graduated from Harvard, lives in a million dollar home, has an African father and grew up in Hawaii. I’m sorry, oops, of course they have much in common – they like football.

Moving swiftly on – another bright spark answered the survey, saying he picked Mc Cain because it’d be fun to sit back with him and “hear his experiences and stories”, sorry to be rude and all but wouldn’t that be a bit of a buzz kill? Then he added, “I bet he’d probably get pretty angry and lit up if his team was losing.” I’m not sure if that was the right thing to say of your chosen candidate young man! It might be just a tad incriminating. Imagine if he was at the helm and we were losing a war?

What if two women were running? (Maybe in the future that fine day will come my friends!) What kind of poll would be conducted then? How about this question: who would you rather go shopping with? Palin? Cindy Mc Cain? Michelle Obama? Clinton? Really I’m torn but I don’t think the political class shop at the same places as most ‘normal’ folks. Do they go to shoe week at Ross? Payless? Target? If they were paying then hell yeah I’d go shopping with them, especially Cindy because one of her outfits at the Republican Convention cost more than a single family home did it not? I don’t think I’d go clothes shopping with Clinton though, unless she’d let me choose her outfits for her. I’d take her to Banana Republic and tart that girl up! She can afford it. Then we’d gather up all those pants suits and give them to the Goodwill.

But again what about people who don’t like football or shopping? What questions can these social outcasts answer in such polls? How about who would you rather have a liquid lunch with? Who would you rather go clubbing with? A picnic? Coffee and a chat? The possibilities are endless. Just don’t ask me to go moose hunting with Sarah Palin. I’d be rooting for the moose!

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but why oh why must the media patronize the voting public in this way? The article I was reading stated: “such views are significant because in many elections, candidates considered more likeable often have an advantage.” There is a grain of truth to this I suppose, but I do believe that there is a far greater level of sophistication among voters this election. Maybe America’s not so shallow. The issues facing each one of us are real and in our face. Reality isn’t so great for the ‘great unwashed’. Candidates are out of touch with their countrymen and women. They live in a different world to most of us struggling to get by on a pittance. While Obama goes home to his mansion and Mc Cain decides which of his seven or so houses he should return to, some people worry about how to pay the rent on a crappy apartment and how to afford health insurance for their kids.

A message to the media: please stop wasting time, energy and resources on these trivial polls and start asking voters about issues that matter. This is not American Idol or America’s Top Model. It’s a presidential election, and an important one. Let’s treat the voting public with a little more respect.

Oh by the way, for those of you who didn’t know, Obama apparently supports the Chicago Bears and Mc Cain roots for the Arizona Cardinals. Just in case this makes a difference to undecided voters out there!

Alison Hill is a featured writer for Xomba.com. Read the rest of her work here .