Courtesy 7-Eleven

Blue cups are more popular than red cups by a 60-40 margin.

To figure out whether President Barack Obama will win re-election, don't bother consulting costly scientific polls. Just check out the self-serve coffee at your local 7-Eleven convenience store.

As it has done in every presidential election since 2000, the convenience store chain is selling red and blue to-go coffee cups marked with the names of the major party candidates, as well as regular, unmarked cups for undecided voter in its "7-Election."

So far Obama is ahead nationally by a wide 60-40 margin, although more scientific polls have the national race as virtually a dead heat. In the closely contested swing state of Ohio, where both candidates are campaigning heavily this week, the coffee cup poll favors the incumbent 57 to 43, with undecided coffee drinkers excluded.

Even though the poll bills itself as "unabashedly unofficial and unscientific," it has accurately predicted the winners since it began in 2000. Not only that, the results have hewed within 1 percentage point of the final popular vote. In 2008, Sen. John McCain got 46 percent in the 7-Election and 45.7 percent in the real election, while Obama got 52 percent of the coffee cups and 52.9 percent of the actual votes. In 2004, President George W. Bush beat Sen. John Kerry in the 7-Election 51-49, compared with 50.7 to 48.3 in the real polls.

Likewise the chain's coffee cup sales had Bush beating Vice President Al Gore in 2000 by a percentage point, while U.S. voters put Gore ahead by 0.5 percentage point in the popular vote. Still, the 7-Election did better than many major media outlets, accurately calling the race for Bush, who ultimately won by Supreme Court decision.

Other cheeky polls also point to a second term for Obama. "Chia Obama," for example, is outselling its Romney Chia planter counterpart, and Obama Halloween masks are also outselling their Republican counterparts.

One reason for the 7-Eleven poll's accuracy could be its large sample set in the millions, compared with 1,000 to 2,000 adults in typical scientific polls. The 7-Election surveys have held up even though customers are allowed to "stuff the ballot box." Each cup purchase, even from the same customer, counts as a vote.

During the chain's Sept. 28 free coffee day, New York looked like a shoo-in for Obama, at least from the 42nd Street location in New York City's Times Square. "It was crazy," 23-year-old cashier Brian Moravec told NBC News. "I had a table stacked with all the cups and nine out of ten people went for the Obama cup." As for the Romney one, people were saying, "Don't even give me that cup," the cashier said.

So which cup does Moravec take? "The courtesy cup. I don't even have time to get into politics," he said with a laugh as he moved to ring up a lottery ticket for another customer.

Those political junkies who do have time to track the voting can rack the results at 7-Election.com for both national and state-by-state results.

Neither campaign's press offices responded to a request by NBC News for comment.

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This year’s presidential election may hinge on voters’ wallets.

More than half of Americans say their own financial well-being is the most important factor, or among the most important factors, when it comes to deciding who’ll they’ll pull the lever for come November, according to a study released Monday by Bankrate.com.

“How Americans feel about the U.S. economy and their own finances will be central to the election on Nov. 6,” said Claes Bell, senior banking expert with Bankrate.com. “While unemployment will probably be above that 7.2 percent historical benchmark when the election takes place, the key question will be whether Americans are comfortable with the progress that has been made since the economy took a turn for the worse.”

The telephone survey, that polled 1,000 adults earlier this month, also found voters were “deeply divided about which candidate will help households get back on track financially.” 

• 21 percent said their personal financial situations would be better under former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney
• 21 percent said they would be better under President Barack Obama 
• And 8 percent were undecided.

But a majority, 50 percent, said whoever wins come November probably wouldn’t make much of a difference when it came to their wallets.

The latest Mommy Wars hoopla on the presidential campaign trail centers on a Mitt Romney statement: “I want individuals to have the dignity of work.”

Romney recently defended his wife’s decision to be a stay-at-home mom and never punch a clock, but in a past speech called for welfare moms to earn a paycheck because of the dignity earning money provides.

Politics aside, the candidate’s declaration about the benefits of paid work opens up an important question. Does earning a living provide individuals with dignity?

“In American culture, it is very difficult to substitute the kind of honored dignity that comes with paid work,” said Katherine Newman, a sociologist and the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

“There’s a premium we place on people in the work world; not that there isn’t tremendous effort put into raising a family,” said Newman, author of “Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence.” “But our society has always defined being in the work world as essential to being a respected adult, and this is self reinforcing.”

Of course, any mother – including Ann Romney – will tell you that parenting is hard work. But in our society, we tend to value paid work differently than difficult tasks that do not come with a paycheck.

Jeremy Carter of Polara Studios

Janie Marsh, an excon who found dignity in work

Janie Marsh, 43, from McMinnville, Ore., is a prime example. She battled drug addiction and alcoholism for 20 plus years, living in the woods and behind dumpsters until ultimately ending up in jail at 36 for a host of charges including stealing cars.

She eventually went through drug treatment, took employment classes at Goodwill Industries, and landed a job in landscaping. “I had never mowed a lawn in my life,” she said.

But, she added, “the first time I saw those lines on the lawn, and a paycheck, it was the greatest feeling. It reconnected me with my community I’d been estranged from. It gave me back my dignity.”

Dignity is hard to define. Merriam-Webster defines it as: “The quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed.” And The American Heritage Dictionary’s meaning says it’s “the presence of poise and self-respect in one’s deportment to a degree that inspires respect.”

The idea of dignity -- according to one extensive study on the topic, “A Taxonomy of Dignity,” by a University of Toronto researcher published in the online journal BioMed Central in 2009 -- “has been criticized for being vague and contradictory.” But the study defined “dignity of self” as “a quality of self-respect and self-worth that is identified with characteristics like confidence and integrity and a demeanor described as dignified.” 

So does employment really help bring about self-respect and self-worth?

Of the list of dignity promoters in the University of Toronto study, being self-sufficient, doing the job right, and working with others were among a list of many contributors to dignity.

“This is why I’m an enduring fan of Roosevelt,” said Newman, about President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who championed the New Deal giving the unemployed jobs during the Great Depression. “He put the nation to work and understood that it's more important that people have jobs, no matter who’s providing them jobs, because if you’re not working you don’t feel you’re whole.”

But Stephen Balzac, a professor of organizational psychology at the Wentworth Institute of Technology and author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” said not all work promotes dignity.

“In general, jobs have the potential to provide people with dignity, defined as greater confidence, feelings of success, and a sense of control over one's life,” he said. “However, for the job to do that, it must be appropriately constructed to increase motivation and self-worth. Jobs that are seen as pure drudgery provide little dignity.”

Not everyone agrees.

Jim Gibbons, president and CEO of Goodwill Industries International, said dignity could be found in the most menial jobs.

“You can probably say there are a lot of high-paid consultants out there who aren’t feeling dignity in their work,” he pointed out. “It depends on the person, and it depends on the culture of an organization.”

Karen Dillon, co-author of the forthcoming book, “How Will You Measure Your Life?,” and contributing editor of the Harvard Business review, said it’s all about what makes you happy and makes you feel good about yourself.

She’s reluctant to use the word “dignity” in this context because she believes “it’s a simplistic way of looking at it.”

A baseline need has to be met by work, she continued, such as being able to support yourself and putting food on the table.

But no matter what an individual’s economic status, she added, the key is how you feel at the end of the day. “Did they feel like something mattered and did they feel they were valued?” she said.

When Diane Johnson was newly married, in her twenties, and working as a broker, she pondered leaving the work world and focusing on starting a family but a friend at the time told her you need to "understand what work means" and told her to read the passage about work in Kahlil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet.’”

The section changed her mind and now, as she nears her 50^th birthday, she said she’s happy she stayed in the work force, ultimately starting her own communications company. 

The passage from the piece by Gibran, a poet and artist, that touched Johnson most:

“Always you have been told that work is a curse and labor a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born.”