Election polls, prediction markets, sportsbook betting odds and past election results are all items used to predict the winner of the 2024 presidential election.
Could following a local Ohio bakery and cookies featuring the likenesses of Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris be a better election predictor? Past results say, maybe so.
What Happened: The latest election polls show an increasingly close race between Trump and Harris with prediction markets often favoring Trump to win re-election by a wider margin.
Busken Bakery, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, uses a cookie poll to predict the winner of each presidential election. The bakery has correctly predicted nine of the past 10 presidential elections dating back to 1984.
"Doughmacracy for all! Voting will end Tuesday at close," the bakery recently said on its Facebook page.
The bakery, which has several locations in Ohio, had all locations closed Sunday and many locations closed Monday.
The bakery shared an update to the results, which tabulates the totals based on which cookies are most sold during the election cycle.
As of Nov. 1, the bakery showed Donald Trump in the lead with 31,115 cookies sold and Harris in second place with 12,260 cookies sold. A third independent smiley-face cookie had 2,204 cookies sold. The latest results show Trump with 68.9% of the cookie vote and Harris with 26.3% of the vote and the Independent vote at 4.7%.
For comparison, the vote percents were 54% for Trump, 39% for Harris and 7% for Independents back in late September.
The vote includes cookies bought in person and online with online sales of eight cookies available for $15.
"We like to joke and say (customers) can stuff the ballot box," CEO Dan Busken previously told The New York Post.
Busken said retail locations cover the north, south, east and west portions of Cincinnati, offering diversity in the vote.
Over the last 10 presidential elections, the cookie poll has been right nine times, missing the 2020 election win by President Joe Biden.
The contest was created by Busken’s father, who observed similar dessert polls predicting the outcomes of Super Bowl winners. The bakery uses a local artist to create the caricatures, which are then transferred to the cookies.
While some customers aren’t fans of the bakery's political stance, Busken reminds them that the contest is “meant to be fun.”
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Why It's Important: Ohio, which will represent 17 electoral votes in the 2024 election, is predicted to be won by Trump. It’s important to note that Trump may gain an advantage in the state, with his running mate, J.D. Vance, serving as its U.S. senator.
While the cookie method may be accurate in predicting presidents, it may have more to do with the state of Ohio being a leading indicator.
From 1964 through 2016, the state picked the winner of each presidential election, a streak that ended in the 2020 election with Trump winning Ohio and losing the overall election.
The Republican candidate won Ohio in the last two presidential elections, a Democrat candidate the two times before that, a Republican candidate the two times before that, and a Democrat candidate the two times before that. If Trump wins the state in 2024, it would mark the first time a party has won three consecutive presidential elections since the 1980 (Reagan), 1984 (Reagan) and 1988 (Bush) elections.
Election polls are commonly used to predict outcomes based on surveys of voters while other prediction methods utilize various data and analytics.
Election forecaster and historian Allan Lichtman, who has successfully predicted nine of the past 10 presidential elections uses a 13-key system he created. His prediction recently declared that Harris would win the 2024 election based on the 13 items.
Lichtman’s lone miss was in 2000 when he predicted Al Gore would defeat George W. Bush. Gore won the popular vote in the election, but lost the electoral college.
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Photos: Shutterstock
