Voters in the 2008 Presidential election didn't have a meaningful choice. Whichever box they ticked, they were voting for a lefty.
Yes, Obama and McCain are both sinistral, a rather unlikely occurrence since just 7-10% of adults are left handed. Netherlands-based neuroscientists Casasanto and Jasmin decided to make use of this coincidence to test the hypothesis that people tend to make "good" gestures with their dominant hand and "bad" ones with their off-hand, in a new PLoS paper: Good and Bad in the Hands of Politicians.
They analyzed the final televised debates from the '04 and '08 elections, in which the candidates discussed various topics, both positive i.e. their own policies, and negative i.e. their opponent's Vietnam War records, choice of running-mate, and association with dodgy preachers. They also examined the gestures that the speakers made to accompany their positive or negative points, and recorded which hand they used. George ...
