McCain's subliminal weapon in Minnesota - Palin's accent?

Some people didn’t like Bill ClintonBill Clinton’s Arkansas twang, others loved it. Some people recoiled at John F. KennedyJohn F. Kennedy’s Boston accent, others swooned. Some in Cal-ee-forn-uh-ya like to hear Gov. Schwarzenegger say the state’s name, others cringe.

Enter Sen. John McCainJohn McCain’s out-of-the-blue VP pick, Gov. Sarah PalinSarah Palin of Alaska.

Punditty has known several Minnesotans in his time – Democrats, Republicans, Independents and apolitical – and many of their voices have the same near-Canadian tonalities and characteristics as Palin’s. Could this be influencing the Minnesota electorate on a subliminal level? If that seems an odd question to be asking, think of it this way: If the 1992 Democratic nominee had looked exactly like Bill Clinton, espoused the same policies but sounded more like a Brooklyn native than someone from Dixie, would the Democrats have carried Kentucky, Louisiana and Georgia that year?

Before McCain tapped Palin, he was anywhere from a few points behind to trailing by double-digits in Minnesota. Today, most polls there show a dead heat or a small Obama lead. Yes, the Republican Convention was held in Minneapolis-St. Paul, which no doubt helped the GOP numbers statewide at least in the short term, but did the surprise emergence of a VP pick who sounds a lot like they do affect Minnesotans’ opinions on some level?

With all the talk on race and gender this year, is voice being overlooked? Not by William Weir, a staff writer at The Hartford Courant. For a Sept. 22 article (linked to below under “submitted news stories”), Weir interviewed several experts about Palin’s accent. Steven Weinberger, a linguistics professor at George Mason University, told the Courant he thinks Palin might be exaggerating her accent in order to remind people of Frances McDermond’s Marge, the smart police chief in “Fargo,” a popular 1996 film by the Coen Brothers.

Another expert, linguistics professer Carmen Fought of Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., told the Courant she thinks Palin sounds more like she’s from Minnesota.

Think of all the politicians you’ve listened to (or tried to tune out) in your lifetime. If they talk like you talk, are you more apt to take a closer look at supporting them than you otherwise might? On the other hand, if Sen. Smith or Gov. Jones sounds like they're from another part of the country, do they have to work harder to get you to listen?

We won’t know until sometime after the polls close on Nov. 4 if Minnesotans will vote to award their state’s 10 Electoral Votes to McCain-Palin or Obama-Biden, and we may never know all the nuances behind their reasoning. Nonetheless, Punditty thinks it’s safe to say that even though not all Minnesotans agree with Palin’s words or the logic behind them, they haven’t had any trouble understanding her.