Ladies and gentlemen, in this year's performance of the U.S. presidential election, the role of "Florida" was played by Ohio. Ha! Just kidding, folks; at the very least, this time we didn't have to listen to interminable debates about butterfly ballots and ambiguous votes (who the heck is Chad, and how'd he wind up pregnant?), and as we fully expected everything settled down in less than a day, and without the Supreme Court needing to decide who gets to put his hand on a book when January rolls around. Compared to the last election, this one was over in a jiffy. Then again, compared to the last election, the Peloponnesian War was over in a jiffy, too.

What does any of this have to do with Apple, you ask? Well, for one thing, let's not forget that Steve Jobs offered to help Kerry with his advertising, so the outcome of this election may well offer some insight into the effectiveness of Steve's Reality Distortion Field in non-tech applications. Oh, and as faithful viewer Eddie H. points out, if history is any indication, now that Kerry has lost, there's also a good chance he'll wind up on Apple's board of directors.

Of course, the most immediate and visible potential consequence of the election on Apple might be its effect on the stock market, which, if memory serves, got pretty skittish in November of 2000. But good news: AAPL was up in after-hours and pre-market trading-- by a buck or so, to boot, so apparently all the voting uncertainty didn't derail the stock's recent and continuing climb up the north face of Mt. Nifty. In fact, with the stock now trading at over $55 a share, Bloomberg News is barely exaggerating at all when it says that AAPL is "erasing the slump triggered in September 2000 by a disappointing profit forecast." (For those of you who have suppressed the painful memory, Apple's stock price had been hovering around $60 before it plunged to about $20 overnight-- but it's feeling much better now.)

So is it the election outcome itself that's giving AAPL a boost? Not likely, unless investors think that Kerry and Gore can work some sort of Wonder Twins superpowers if they both wind up on Apple's board, unlocking shareholder value with the "shape of... an eagle" and the "form of... a tidal wave." No, this time the increase appears to be prompted by Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich, who's still yapping about iPods. This time, though, instead of making iffy predictions of a flash-based iPod, he's taking a stab at guessing how many iPods Apple will sell by the end of the year. He figures Apple's looking at moving about 2.68 million for the quarter, and evidently Wall Street approves.

Personally, we think that might even be a little low; sure, it's almost four times as many as Apple sold last holiday season, but Apple sold 2 million just last quarter, and somehow we think that the iPod Photo, the iPod U2 Special Edition, the spread of the iTunes Music Store further throughout Europe, and a little thing called Christmas will all juice sales by more than the piddly 34% increase Milunovich is predicting. After all, iPod sales increased by 134% between the last two quarters, and that was without a major gift-giving holiday to spice things up. (And no, "Don't Step on a Bee Day" doesn't count.)

So relax; we knew all along that no matter which of the two candidates got to run this country into the ground over the course of the next four years, Apple was going to do just fine. And if we really want to avoid all this mess in the future, what say we just get an iPod on the ballot in 2008? Its running mate can be an iSight or something. Or maybe Phil Schiller.