There are many ways to determine who will win a presidential election. Poll analysis. Demographic projection. Listening to people repeat conventional wisdom on television for hours on end. Even waiting until Election Day for the actual results. But while each of these methods has its merits, we here at Stumper headquarters have decided--for today at least--to use a different yardstick to determine who will emerge victorious on Nov. 4:

The candidates' physical attributes.

Call it the body politic. In recent years, political geeks have eagerly cataloged and compared the corporeal quirks of presidential candidates in search of patterns that reveal what the American people are looking for in a leader. At this point, someone somewhere probably knows whether the White House hopeful with expansive ears typically defeats a smaller-flapped foe. Does that mean that the size of a particular politician's auditory organs actually helps determine whether he will occupy the Oval Office? Not so much. But considering the amount of attention we pay to polls--which, after all, incorrectly predicted the winner of the popular vote in four out of the last five elections at this point in the cycle--it couldn't hurt to take a look at what the anatomical record has to say about the battle between John McCain and Barack Obama. A feature-by-feature face-off:

HEIGHT:
If the most familiar bit of physical folk wisdom about presidential elections--"The taller of the two major-party candidates always wins"--were true, then McCain might as well give up now: at 5'7", he's a full five-and-a-half inches shorter than the 6'1.5" Obama. Luckily for the Arizonan, there's still hope. For the 46 elections in which the heights of both candidates are known, the shorter candidate managed to come out on top--pun intended--at least 17 times. That's not nothing. What's more, the trend seems to be heading in McCain's (downward) direction, with four of the last nine contests going to the more diminutive combatant. In 1972, Richard Nixon (5'11") beat George McGovern (6'1"). Four years later, Jimmy Carter (5'9") repeated the rare trick, trouncing Gerald Ford (6'1"). And George W. Bush (5'11")--according to critics, McCain's clone--twice defeated taller men. Still, the odds favor the loftier pol, who has captured 59 percent of past presidential elections. Adding to McCain's woes: his particularly meager stature. The last candidate shorter than 5'9" to secure the presidency was William McKinley (5'7") in 1900. That said, the average American man was 5'6" at the time; today, he's 5'10". To find a shorter-than-average president, which McCain would be, we'd have to go all the way back to 1812, when Americans elected the minuscule James Madison (5'4"). Ultimately, if McCain did manage to defeat Obama, he'd be overcoming the largest height gap since Franklin Pierce (5'10") surpassed Winfield Scott (6'5") in 1852. And you thought Obama was the only one poised to make history this year. Advantage: Obama.

EYE COLOR:
Less familiar than the height factor but definitely more consistent: of our 43 presidents, a shocking 38 have had blue, gray or hazel eyes. The brown-eyed exceptions? John Quincy Adams, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. (With one impeachee and one near-impeachee, that's not exactly a stellar lineup.) Genetic diversification can partially explain this pattern. Because the country's early ethnic settlers--English, Scottish, Irish and German, primarily--tended to have blue eyes, 50 percent of Americans boasted the recessive genetic trait as recently as 1900. But at no point in U.S. history were 89 percent of the population's peepers blue. In fact, while the general incidence of non-brown eyes declined to its current level of 16 percent over the last century, the presidential rate held steady at nine out of ten. Any way you look at it, that's a highly disproportionate number--and in our battle of the body parts, it gives the blue-eyed McCain an edge over his brown-eyed rival. Advantage: McCain.

HANDEDNESS:
Is it sinister? Or just the latest anatomical pattern in presidential politics? As Russell Berman reports in this morning's New York Sun, only "two presidents [before 1974] were known definitively to be left-handed: James Garfield and Harry Truman." Since then, however, "presidents Ford, Reagan*, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton have all favored their left hands, while [only] President Carter and the current President Bush are righties." That's a 66 percent rate of presidential left-handedness in recent years--compared to only 10 percent in the population at large. Coincidence? Some experts think not. Melissa Roth, the author of "The Left Stuff: How the Left-Handed Have Survived and Thrived in a Right Handed World," argues that lefties realize early on that they're different from their peers and seek to distinguish themselves accordingly. "Their difference might be treated as a positive or a negative, a 'creative' asset or a failure to adapt," she told Berman. "But either way they are aware that they are 'special,' and that's a trait psychologists find in many leaders." So who has the upper hand? Neither McCain nor Obama, actually. Turns out they're both southpaws. What's more, the list of lefties who've lost the presidency in the past two decades (Bob Dole, John Edwards, Bill Bradley, Ross Perot) is as long as the list of winners. How gauche. Advantage: Tied.

BALDNESS:
These days, the only thing worse than being a short, brown-eyed, right-handed presidential candidate is being a short, brown-eyed, right-handed presidential candidate who's also bald. The U.S. has elected only five hairless presidents in its long and illustrious history, and four of them--John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren and James Garfield--won the White House before 1880, when voters weren't forced endure the sight of their pink, shiny, uncovered craniums on television. Since then, only Dwight Eisenhower has managed to overcome his follicular deficit and assume the highest office in the land--which barely counts, considering he had the benefit of running twice against Adlai Stevenson, who was even balder. The only bald president of the last 50 years--Gerald Ford--wasn't actually elected, and Dick Cheney wasn't *technically* president. This spells trouble for John McCain. Despite the white wisps combed across his skull, the Arizona senator is more bald than not. Worse, he's running against the only candidate in U.S. history who's ever grown an afro. (Other than Andrew Jackson, of course.) Even if McCain does win, his hair-related problems won't, ahem, recede. Adams, Quincy Adams and Van Buren were one-term presidents; Garfield was shot less than four months after taking office. Advantage: Obama.

MELANIN LEVEL:
After a close analysis of historical documents, I have determined that precisely 100 percent of our presidents have been white. Advantage: McCain.

FINAL SCORE:
2-2-1. A tie. Perhaps there's something to that whole "waiting until Election Day for the actual results" thing after all.

*As in his politics, Reagan apparently went from left to right as he got older.