Election Day is just around the corner, and the presidential election is coming to a head. The guys at the deli counter, every other television commercial, and even YouTube clips are all telling you to get out and vote.

Now Apple has grabbed a slice of that American pie by adding political-themed apps in the iTunes App Store. Some of these rate better than others. But they’re all dedicated to making you more politically aware before you cast that ballot.


Campaign
$0.99
Gorloch Interactive

Campaign is an excellent application, and it’s a pity that its usefulness will expire after the election. It garners the top headlines from news sources such as The Huffington Post, Reuters, and Newsweek; it displays the latest polls, including polls in battleground states; it lets you focus on each candidate and read their blogs and where they stand on the issues; and it gives you a forum where you can voice your opinions on topics like foreign policy and security. Heck, it does everything but vote for you.

It’s not a perfect app—it crashed on me three times—but it’s darned close.

If after the election Gorloch Interactive reworks their app to focus on current political affairs, they will have a winner on their hands.


iRepublican
Free
Shekhar Yadav

iRepublican is a free app, which is a good thing, because it’s only a screenshot with the words “Proud to be Republican” underneath a picture of a patriotic elephant. (its sister app does the same thing, but substitute “Democrat” and a patriotic donkey.) If you’re the type who dresses in your party’s color on Election Day, then by all means download it. But for the rest of you, it’s not even worth the storage space on your iPhone.

Election
$0.99
Cascade Software Corporation

Election is a good collection of polling material from across the country. Election divides its data into national, state, and battleground states, charting the country’s perceptions of the two major candidates over the last month by averaging multiple sources. Every state includes historical data from the 2004 election.

Election also include extra polls from companies like Gallup and the Pew Research Center, as well as news sources like NBC and the Washington Post. Questions, updated frequently, include, “What is the single most important issue in your choice for president?”

Unfortunately, the “commentary” section refused to load multiple times because of a “temporary internet connectivity glitch.” Despite that flaw, Elections makes a tasty bite for those who enjoy food for thought.


Votetastic
$0.99
One Pony

It’s electoral votes that count in an election. With Votetastic, you can count those electoral votes yourself.

Votetastic displays the name of each state, plus its number of electoral votes. Underneath is a bar with the colors red or blue, for Republican or Democrat. If you predict a blue state like New York will vote red, select the state and hit “McCain.” Votetastic will recalculate electoral votes. If you or the state is undecided, you can select the center question mark, and the electoral votes go uncounted.

So on Election Day while watching the news, you can learn how each state votes and see if your forecast was correct. Or you could edit each state as the results pour in.

Votetastic is an interesting thought-experiment for people who like to play with numbers and are invested in politics. Votetastic’s appeal, unfortunately, is limited to those few.


Electoral 08
$0.99
Zentropy Software

Electoral 08 is a lot like Votetastic, only it displays a map, rather than a bar. Unfortunately, despite polls that currently place Barack Obama in the lead, Electoral 08 has John McCain winning by 34 electoral votes. (CNN  says Obama is ahead 286 to 183, with 89 electoral votes undecided.)

As with Votetastic, Electoral 08 has limited appeal. But it does put the votemap in perspective by giving us historical data from each presidential election since 1972, when Nixon beat McGovern 520 to 17.


Go DEMS!
$1.99
Ontomni

Go DEMS!, and its sister app, Go GOP!, is like whack-a-mole, but instead of a hammer and a mole, you’re armed only with a finger and the spirit of the times.

We purchased Go DEMS!, where we annihilated red elephants of varying sizes and speeds. But don’t be so quick to whack: blue donkeys also appear. And if you slap down your own party, you’ll lose points. Depending on the mode, the game ends if you miss too many pesky elephants, if you hit too many blue donkeys, both, or when the timer goes of.

Go DEMS! has a rather drab background, and the game provides no sound, but you can crush your opponents with your own soundtrack. (We recommend Carmina Burana: O Fortuna, which can turn a mere smack-down into an epic battle.)


WhackaPoll
$0.99
Frontier Design Group

WhackaPoll bears a striking resemblance to Go DEMS!: a finger-whacking game of political snarkiness. WhackaPoll has other benefits, but it also has one important drawback: you only have your opponent party to whack, which makes the game about speed but not skill.

First, choose either Democrat or Republican (to keep things politically neutral, we played both), then whack away at the pop-up icons. You’ll see immediately that WhackaPoll is more attractive than Go DEMS!, and the sound is kinda cute. If you hit the icon, your party advances, but if you miss a chance to beat down an icon, the other party sneaks up on the presidential meter.

But the real fun happens when you win a game. Frontier Design then sends you to a Safari page, where it tallies your victory and displays the collective results. (Before press time, whackers worldwide had claimed the presidency for Barack Obama.)