Every four years, the Monogram Store in East Hampton sells mugs bearing the names of presidential candidates from each party. And every year except 2016, the best-selling candidate wins the election.

By early summer, wealthy Hamptons residents spending the season out east were buying. Donald Trump cups by the boatload. The race wasn’t even close. As of July 21, Trump was ahead President Joe Biden From 2,610 to 847 in coupe sales, this seems like an insurmountable advantage. This isn’t exactly shocking. The Hamptons are the home or second home of some of America’s wealthiest people; Many of them may not like Trump, but they wouldn’t mind having a president who could bring them tax cuts and deregulation, which in this case is definitely Donald Trump. . Many such people are art collectors; That’s how it works in the Hamptons!

But then something truly shocking happened. Biden left Kamala Harris He became the Democratic nominee, and the mug sales momentum at The Monogram Shop immediately reversed. When I stood outside the quaint shop on Newtown Lane on Saturday, July 27, proprietor Val Smith He said he ordered 800 Harris glasses and sold them immediately. Harris sold 419 cups the previous day to Trump’s 88. During the final sell-off period earlier that day, Harris beat Trump 126 to two.

“My crystal ball is broken; I don’t know how many of these glasses I should order,” Smith told me in July. “The difference is very impressive.”

So we thought we’d give Smith a call in the Hamptons to get the final total and see if Harris’ momentum would continue after that early honeymoon. That’s what happened. By election day, the store had sold 14,376 Harris mugs to Trump’s 8,010, and Trump noted that he had a nearly two-month head start on the busy season in the Hamptons, selling 2,554 of them before Harris entered the race.

Courtesy of Monogram Shop.

“The initial rush to buy Kamala cups had more to do with everyone’s relief than Kamala herself,” Smith told me Tuesday. “And his poise and sustainability throughout the summer showed that he could be absolutely cool under fire. He earned the enthusiasm reflected by the cups.”

Taken this way, the results are in line with the summer of 2020, when Hamptons residents purchased 5,207 Biden mugs compared to 1,863 Trump mugs. But Smith added that things have tightened up in the last few days. On Monday, Trump outsold Harris by a few cups, and then on Tuesday, Harris outsold 44 and Trump outsold zero.

And it is worth noting that: Even if he loses the election, Trump wins Suffolk County, home to East Hampton, by just 232 votes. Anything can happen, friends.