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One of the nation's oldest and most reliable polls for the presidential election is warming to former President Donald Trump.

The Cincinnatti "Cookie Poll," a homely quadrennial Ohio tradition in election years, has accurately predicted the next president since 1984, except once. The unscientific survey revolves around the diehard customers of Busken Bakery who have until November 5th to purchase a cookie of their preferred candidate, either in person or online. After thousands of orders, Trump is leading Vice President Kamala Harris with 54% support (2,953 cookies) to Harris' 39% (2,134 cookies), with an "independent" smiley-face cookie scoring 7% (397 cookies), according to the New York Post.

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Bakery president and CEO Dan Busken likened the early tally to an "early voting" period. "We like to joke and say [customers] can stuff the ballot box," he told the Post. Customers may purchase as many cookies as they want across Busken Bakery's four regional stores. Each cookie counts as a single vote.

Despite its lack of empirical rigor, the Cincinnati cookie poll has successfully predicted all but one of the past 10 presidential elections. The one its customers missed? President Joe Biden's victory over Trump in 2020. Still, the swing state-turned-red state is regionally and economically diverse, both factors which Busken said contribute to the reliability of his poll. "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 explained. "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."

Until 2020, pollsters relied on the Buckeye State as a bellwether for presidential elections going back to 1964. The midwestern battleground sided with the presidential winner of every election until 2020, when the state went for Trump but Biden carried Election Day. That hasn't stopped Busken or his father, Page, who founded the cookie poll and has expanded their unscientific survey into one of Ohio's favorite pastimes football and predicting the Super Bowl.

"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," Dan Busken explained. "It's meant to be fun." Unfortunately, he added, the contentious nature of modern politics means some customers are experiencing more hurt feelings and cold shoulders from their neighbors than in past elections. "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."

No matter the result on Election Day, Busken said cookie sales will remain strong because customers and voters want to feel like they have a say in how the results will turn out. "We sold a lot more in the first two weeks than we did the last election," he said. "So I'd say cookie voter turnout has been up."

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