Donald Trump Gets Positive Sign From ‘Cookie Poll’ in Critical Swing State

As the 2024 presidential election draws closer, former President Donald Trump received a positive sign from a “cookie poll” in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state.
With several polls continuing to predict the election outcome in which Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, will face off in November, one local Pennsylvania bakery is conducting their own poll.
Lochel’s Bakery in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, has started conducting its “cookie poll” in which it sells presidential candidate cookies—red sprinkles for “Trump 2024” and blue sprinkles for “Harris 2024.”
In an interview with Fox News on Friday, Lochel’s Bakery revealed that as of that morning Trump is leading with 5,200 cookies sold versus Harris’ 500 cookies sold.
“I know this triggers a lot of emotions and people get bent….keep calm and eat a cookie! The cookie poll is not scientific. Just delicious,” Lochel’s Bakery wrote on Facebook when announcing the tally of the cookies earlier this month, which previously had Trump at 2,673 cookies sold versus Harris at 291.
The bakery, who stated it remains neutral on the matter, has conducted this informal poll since 2012, predicting the outcome of three of the last four elections. However, its winning prediction streak ended when Biden won the 2020 election despite only having 173 cookies sold to Trump’s 290.
This comes as battleground states, including Pennsylvania, will play a key role in determining the result of this year’s election due to the Electoral College, which awards each state a certain number of electoral votes based on population. A presidential candidate needs to secure 270 electoral votes for victory, and winning the national popular vote does not guarantee success. Surveys from battleground states may be more telling than those of national polls.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s and Harris’ campaigns via email for comment.
Trump and Harris are focusing their efforts in Pennsylvania with its 19 Electoral College votes as it’s a critical state that one needs to win in the election. And polls have indicated that Harris is currently ahead in Pennsylvania, having evaporated Trump’s lead when she became the candidate in July when President Joe Biden stepped down.
However, recent polling suggests Harris’ lead in the state may be narrowing.
According to FiveThirtyEight, as of Saturday morning, Harris is leading by 0.7 points with 47.5 percent to Trump’s 46.8 percent. This comes after FiveThirtyEight showed earlier this month that Harris was in the lead with 1.2 points—46.2 percent to Trump’s 45 percent.
In addition, the RealClearPolitics’ poll tracker showed earlier this month that Harris was only 0.3 points ahead in Pennsylvania, while The Economist’s poll tracker shows she was 0.1 points ahead. Pollster Nate Silver’s model, meanwhile, shows Trump gained 0.5 points in the polls in Pennsylvania earlier this month.
Robert Speel, associate professor of political science at Penn State University, previously told Newsweek that in order for Harris to secure a victory in Pennsylvania she needs to avoid making the same mistakes as Hillary Clinton, who lost the state to Trump in 2016.
“One key goal of the Harris campaign if she wants to win Pennsylvania is to not repeat the mistakes that the Hillary Clinton campaign made in 2016 when she lost Pennsylvania,” he said.
Speel added: “While the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metro areas are the two largest in the state by far, they only contain about half of the state’s population. In 2016, Clinton herself campaigned almost exclusively in the two big metro areas and ignored much of the rest of the state, for example never visiting Erie County where I live. Trump did visit Erie and many of Pennsylvania’s smaller cities during the 2016 campaign, and Biden visited Erie in 2020 before winning the county.”
Pennsylvania has voted Democrat in seven of the past eight presidential elections, going for the Republican candidate only in 2016 when Trump won by a narrow margin of 0.7 percent.