Trump tops Kamala 54-39% in Cincinnati cookie poll that has picked presidential winners for decades

Cookie-loving voters have selected Trump cookies 54 percent of the time (2,953 cookies) compared to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 39 percent (2,134 cookies). There’s an independent candidate in this race though and the happy face cookie has garnered 7 percent attraction from participants (397 cookies) in the Busken Bakery unscientific poll, which will remain open until the Nov. 5 Election Day.

The numbers could be said to correspond to early voting results, where the Republicans are showing strong results. “We like to joke and say [customers] can stuff the ballot box,” bakery president and CEO Dan Busken told The Post. To participate, customers don’t actually have to visit one of Busken’s four stores but can buy a cookie online with their favorite candidate’s face on it. Buying multiple cookies is allowed too.

When the store began assessing voting tastes in 1984, it correctly predicted the reelection of President Ronald Reagan. It was only wrong once: in 2020 when most customers picked Trump cookies over Biden, but Biden was named the next president. “Our results, out of our four retail stores, kind of cover the north, south, east and west portions of Cincinnati. So they’re pretty diverse,” Busken told the Post.

“It’s definitely interesting that in a state like Ohio and in a city like Cincinnati that there’s been such accuracy in this cookie poll over the years.” Like the store, Ohio has accurately picked the winner of presidential elections. From Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to Trump in 2016, the state indicated how the nation would go. Like the cookie store, Ohio got it wrong in 2020 when Trump won the state but lost the election.

“We hire a local artist [Jim White] that does caricatures, and he draws a caricature of each candidate. And then we transfer that image to a cookie,” Busken told the Post. “It’s meant to be fun.”

But not everyone is having a good time with the novelty poll. “Some people this year — especially more than any prior elections — have been more vocal and, not so friendly about things,” Busken reflected. “But we’re moving forward. We’ve done it for 40 years. We think it’s fun.”

In the world of scientific polls, the race between the two candidates remains extremely close, especially in the battleground states. Harris has not experienced any post-presidential debate bounce, despite many media pundits being convinced she won the contest with Trump. Harris’ failure to surge may have been stunted by post-debate coverage, where many said that the debate appeared to be three of them against Trump.

Mark Penn, a former top adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, said that ABC needs an investigation to discover why the moderators appeared to favor Harris over Trump. Moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis "fact-checked" many of Trump’s statements but did not question any of Harris’ often false assertions. Ratings for Muir’s World News Tonight on ABC plummeted amid discussion that he had favored Harris over Trump with fact-checking and questions.