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Bush and Kerry are in a fierce debate.

What's the big question US presidential candidates should be asking themselves?

Is my name short enough?

You only have to glance at the credits on a Hollywood movie to see the polysyllabic, ethnic diversity of surnames in the great melting pot of the United States.

But when it comes to voting for a president, the gene pool shrinks rapidly, and the preference is for monikers that are blunt and Anglo-Saxon.

So if you want to find a way of forecasting who is going to win the race for the presidency, look at the lengths and origins of their names. The pattern since World War II has been for candidates with increasingly short, poster-friendly names. And preferably sounding like they could be the lead characters in a mini-series.

In the last electoral battle, in 2000, the names couldn't have got any shorter, with a two-syllable play-off between George Bush and Al Gore.

Perhaps the Republicans have already rumbled this short-name advantage. In the three decades since Richard Nixon was turfed out of office, Ronald Reagan has been the only Republican candidate with a surname longer than one syllable. Coincidence?

This hasn't always been successful. Bob Dole was overrun by the longer-named Bill Clinton, but again it was by someone with an unassuming surname and there was only a single syllable difference.

Bill Clinton also has the distinction of being one of only two presidents since the WWII to have beaten rivals with fewer syllables in their name. The other was Jimmy Carter, who beat Gerald Ford, in the far from usual circumstances following Watergate.

Otherwise the candidate with a shorter name has not been defeated. All of which must be a worrying sign for John Kerry - unless the "Dubya" is counted as part of his rival's name.

Looking at the candidates' syllable count isn't an entirely frivolous way of looking at elections, says Barbara Kellerman, research director at the Center for Public Leadership, in the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

If politics is about brand logos and bumper stickers, then "short and punchy" names which are highly visible and easy to remember are going to be an advantage, she says.

When "masculine leadership" is to the fore, a single syllable name is going to sound "strong, sturdy and forceful", says Professor Kellerman. "Attention spans are shrinking with each generation, and in an era of sound-bites having a short name is going to make a difference. There's something attention-grabbing about it."  
 
(Agencies)