Long Island has its own presidential poll this election year: The humorous and completely unscientific survey of The Monogram Shop/Cieslak’s Modern Bakery.

When legitimate polls show a presidential race is close enough to be within the statistical margin of error, unofficial polls can be just as good a predictive tool. Two Suffolk County stores also selling Kamala Harris and Donald Trump branded merchandise show local voters are divided.

Valerie Smith, owner of The Monogram Shop, a home goods store in East Hampton, has sold plastic cups with candidates’ names in every presidential election year since 2004, correctly predicting the winner every time except 2016. The former Cieslak’s Modern Bakery this year began selling cookies named after Democratic candidate Harris or Republican candidate Trump.

“We thought it would be fun to watch what happened,” said Eileen Biggs, 72, of Lindenhurst, who, with her sister Lauren Zacher, runs the family business their late grandfather opened in 1934. – White cookies, red for Trump, blue for Harris, with the candidate’s name written in white icing and the year 2024, began selling for $2.49 each in October. “We can’t offer these every day, usually only on weekends, but we’ll make up for it if people want it.”

Shortly after launching the cookies, Biggs said he stopped tracking which candidate was “winning” sales, but “Trump was ahead at that point.”

The Monogram Shop sells stackable, shatter-resistant 16-ounce plastic cups for $3 each year-round, but during presidential election cycles, candidates’ names are added and a running sales tally is posted. The store’s website says cup counting is a way to “take the temperature of the election.”

“We started during the primary (in 2004) when there were multiple contestants and we made trophies for each of them, just to see where the excitement was before the election,” said Smith, 75, of East Hampton. The 27-year-old runs the store with her granddaughter Sophie Mengus. “Once we found the two candidates, (George W.) Bush and (John) Kerry, we moved on. And we’ve done it every year since.”

This year, Trump was trailing Joe Biden 2,610 to 847 as of July 21. The store introduced Harris mugs on July 24, after the vice president became the presumptive Democratic nominee. As of Oct. 30, the latest count shows Harris at 14,1244 and Trump at 4,942.

Erica Chase-Gregory, director of the Small Business Development Center at Farmingdale State College, said this type of informal product purchasing survey from retailers is not uncommon. Whether or not it has an impact on sales, innovation can help a store stay in people’s minds, he said.

“I don’t think it’s going to move the dial too far one way or another,” he said of the sales potential of such efforts. “Maybe someone gets an extra cookie when they buy a cake. Or maybe someone walks in and likes the cups and says, ‘Oh, I want 20 of these for the picnic.'”

“This doesn’t mean a sales glut,” Smith said. “Many people only buy one cup.” But he said the effort had a “huge impact” on expanding his store’s reach. “People who would never dream of coming to the store – read: men – come just to buy glasses.”

He added, “I didn’t start doing this as a marketing tactic. I started selling the cups in 2004 because I was curious about who people were supporting, rather than making it up as a clever way to increase foot traffic.”

What’s critical is for a store to remain neutral, Chase-Gregory said. “If you’re bipartisan, no one leaves saying, ‘I was shut down.’ No one feels attacked, and that just shows they’re having fun.”

When it comes to cookies and cups, Harris leads in the Suffolk district, while Trump appears to mirror the county itself in the other: The 2020 election saw a razor-thin 232-vote margin between the two major party candidates, according to the county board. In the elections, 381,253 (49.40%) votes were cast for Trump and 381,021 (49.37%) for Biden.

But in this wildly heated 2024 election, Smith said his store faces online criticism no matter how neutral its polling is. It posted daily counts online throughout 2020 without incident. This year, “We got some really bad reviews online that weren’t there at all in the store. … We thought it was an unpleasant thing to do, so we removed (the daily issues) from the site.”

Biggs said that such unpleasantness happens face to face in the bakery. “There are some people who get provoked if (their candidate’s) cookies aren’t there,” he said. “We should always keep at least one of each (displayed) on the shelf” in the days when cookies are available. “Otherwise they will be insulted. This is magnificent.”

Smith, who presses his glasses at a factory in Texas, isn’t sure when he’ll stop selling this year’s product. After the elections on November 5, he can put the leftovers in a box on the street and write ‘free’ on it. “

Or maybe not. “I wouldn’t be surprised if people come back later and want to keep buying these as souvenirs. It was a pretty historic election year, let’s face it.”