Forget The Polls; Track The Candidate-Cookie Numbers

The cookie polls prove it: Voters go on gut instinct. Karmacamilleeon/Flickr

 

by Todd Kliman

Thanks to the ceaseless "news cycle" and a growing horde of media outlets, there is no end to polling data, and tracking of the candidates has become a daily and sometimes hourly activity.

Witness the aftermath of this week's faux-town hall debate, when a flurry of polls that night and the next morning showed Barack Obama had edged John McCain, and appeared to gain a bit of separation from his Republican rival. Or did he?

What the cookie metrics suggest, after the jump...

Within days, the numbers rose and fell like the Dow. Some polls had the Democratic nominee up by a couple of points; some by as many as ten points. And still others showed the candidates close to deadlocked. How is a political junkie to get an accurate read on the race?

By tracking the cookies.

Every four years, restaurants, bars and bakeshops around the country engage in the time-honored practice of gastronomic gamesmanship, designating a drink or dish or treat to signify the Democratic and Republican candidates and inviting patrons to choose their favorite -- in effect, to vote with their stomachs.

If the recent past is prologue, then you can tell a lot about what will happen on election night by seeing which way the cookie crumbles. In 2004, the tightness of the Bush-Kerry race was mirrored by the virtual dead heat in cookie sales in the months leading up to November.

At Bay Bakery, in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, it was nearly a draw between Kerry/Edwards "donkey" cookies and Bush/Cheney "elephant" cookies. At Mannino's Bakery, a cake shop in Detroit, Kerry and Bush ran neck and neck. Even at the Blue Bonnet Bakery, in Fort Worth, Texas, Bush's home turf, the President was hard put to ditch his Democratic rival.

This year? The cookies portend a decisive Obama victory.

Perhaps it's not a surprise that Obama cookies would be outselling McCain cookies at Max and Benny's Restaurant, a half-hour's drive from downtown Chicago, the Democratic nominee's hometown. But by a 20-1 margin? (Of course, that might also have something to do with the renderings of the candidates: Obama has been given the geniality of Mr. Rogers; McCain is snarling.)

In Michigan, a battleground state, the tally on the homepage of Ryke's Bakery & Coffee Shop, a fixture in Muskegon since 1937, tells the story of the "O" and "M" cookies: Obama 1,585, McCain 603. Obama cookies are even outselling McCain cookies at Tammie Coe Cakes in Phoenix.

Mere trivia? Perhaps. But political scientists are forever reminding us that the majority of voters go with their gut. These populist cookie polls literally prove it.

Todd Kliman is a James Beard Award-winning restaurant critic and the food and wine editor of Washingtonian magazine. The Wild Vine, his book about the Rosetta stone of American wine, is due in 2009.