Pennsylvania Bakery is ready for the election cookie survey

People drive hours to buy cookies at Lochel's Bakery outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And orders for his red and blue cookies come from as far away as the American state of Alaska.

They're coming too Buy the 4-inch round cookies in blue and white with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris' name on them. Or they want the red and white cookies with Republican candidate Donald Trump's name on them.

These are not your everyday cookies. At Lochel's Bakery, the sale of every Harris 2024 or Trump 2024 cookie counts as a vote for the candidate. The candidate with the most cookies sold is considered the winner of their “Cookie Opinion poll.”

The cookie sale and cookie poll began as a joke between the bakery owners and theirs during the 2008 presidential election Customers. The Cookie Poll correctly predicted Barack Obama as the winner in 2008 and 2012 and Trump as the winner in 2016. But in 2020, more customers bought cookies named after Trump, who lost the election that year to Joe Biden.

Kathy Lochel is one of the bakery's owners. She said the cookie survey was meant to be fun. “It’s definitely not scientific. It’s just a way to reduce electoral pressure,” Lochel added.

Helene Moran recently bought Trump cookies for her 82nd birthday. Moran said she bought every time Trump ran for election. “He’s my darling, I love him so much,” she said.

Lochel said the bakery is selling even more cookies this year than it did in 2020. “These cookies are currently being shipped all over the United States, so much so that they are on sale Reorder“So we’re about three to four weeks behind,” Lochel said.

It helps that Lochel's Bakery is mediocre and densely populated Suburbs from Philadelphia. The bakery is also located in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where support for Trump and Harris is evenly split among voters. Whichever candidate wins more battleground states will likely win this year's election.

Sales of Trump cookies may have increased after he shared a story about the cookie poll on social media. As of Sept. 24, Trump led Harris in cookie sales 12,558 to 889 — a far larger lead than real-world exit polls of likely voters showed.

Lochel says that while the real election featured attack ads and name-calling, the cookie-buying crowd was much nicer.

“The people that come into our store, whether they're buying red cookies or blue cookies, they're friendly, they're joking, they're laughing, they're buying other things,” Lochel said.

I'm Andrew Smith.

Andrew Smith adapted this story for VOA Learning English from a report by The Associated Press.

________________________________________________

Words in this story

Opinion poll -N. A survey asking people what they think or what they want to do

customer -N. a person who buys things from a physical or online store

Reorder -N. Things that customers have purchased but the seller cannot yet deliver to them

suburb -N. an area, typically with many houses, that is immediately outside a city