People don't vote randomly. They tend to vote with the candidate they most associate/identify with. It is unlikely that the completely stupid portion of the population is going to be evenly divided amongst the candidates. Look at Bush; by what metric is he the ideal president?
Answer: he's Christian, and he says a lot of things about "God" and "family values" with a yokel's dialect. He ruined Gore's and (especially) Kerry's shit amongst the lower percentiles of the IQ distribution -- even though they have the least economic incentive to vote for him.
Keeping unimportant wedge-issues at the forefront of political discourse allowed his campaign to play Christian morality (prejudice) all the way to the Whitehouse. [sarcasm]Because we all know gay marriage is undermining the American way of life.[/sarcasm]
It helped that Kerry was a complete douche bag, of course, but I still stand by my earlier claim: winning in American politics is about winning the hearts and minds of stupid people. This observation has accurately picked the winner of every presidential election I've ever witnessed. For every election I've seen (only 4), the guy that communicates the best with stupid people wins.
Have any of you older guys, who have witnessed more elections, seen this predictor fail?