Governor Crist has an image problem. No, not the whole RINO thing. And no, not that other thing. Take a look at the photo on the left. The largest image, with the smiling face on top of the American flag is taken directly from the Governor's campaign website: www.charliecrist.com. The other photos, all taken from other public sources. Notice the difference? Turns out the single main photo of Crist used on his campaign site is the inverse image of Charlie. The hair is, of course, parted on the other side - and you can see that his moles are switched.
Ok, okay - not a big deal. Some web designer got cute. Sure someone might make some hay out of it ("which side is he on?" or "moves from right to left") - but there are more pressing reasons for voters to vote for or against a candidate. But what is pretty interesting is how much information is actually conveyed in an image. Political scientists, psychologists, and others have been studying what information is conveyed to voters by virtue of images alone. As it turns out, image matters quite a bit. About 70% of the time in a general election, perception of "competency" from a photograph is a good proxy for determining the winner of the election. More beautiful candidates - and this holds true especially for women - also tend to win an increased share of the vote. And even simple college yearbook photographs can be used to determine, with somewhat surprising accuracy, whether the individual is a Democrat or a Republican. For the sake of comparison, here is a similar composite of Speaker Rubio. Which one is more competent? Which one is more beautiful? Which one is a Republican?
