Harry's Bar in Paris drinks to US straw-poll centenary

A straw poll at Harry's Bar in Paris, famous for calling US elections with uncanny accuracy, celebrates its centenary this year as Americans again flock to the drinking hole ahead of the November vote.

So long as they are US passport holders, patrons get to cast a symbolic vote at a ballot box set up at the bar in the Opera district of the French capital.

Founded in 1911, Harry's Bar claims to be Europe's oldest cocktail bar and to have invented the Bloody Mary.

Once a regular haunt of literary greats Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, actor Humphrey Bogart and jazzman Cole Porter, it still attracts famous people, such as bestselling author Douglas Kennedy who on Monday cast the election year's first ballot here.

"It's an interesting tradition," said Timothy Zeller, an American tourist. "They haven't always been right, but they've been right more than they've been wrong."

The outcome of the Harry's Bar vote has, in fact, diverged from the actual US election result only three times since the tradition started in 1924: In 1976, when Jimmy Carter became president, in 2004 when George W. Bush was re-elected and in 2016, when Donald Trump won the White House.

"My mind is made up," said American literary critic Steven Sampson, a Paris resident casting his ballot at Harry's for the first time.

He told AFP he was "curious" to see whether the straw poll will get it right again when Kamala Harris faces off against Trump on November 5.

To pass the time until the result, patrons can sample two cocktail creations inspired by the candidates, the "Trumpet" -- on the menu since Trump's 2016 campaign -- and the "Kamala Harry's Bar".

Back in the 1920s American expatriates could not vote in presidential elections because there was no absentee voting, said bar manager Franz-Arthur MacElhone.

His great-grandfather Harry MacElhone decided to give Americans in Paris the chance to vote symbolically "and have a party" to overcome their frustration at not being allowed to participate in the real thing.

Novelist Douglas Kennedy kicked off this year's voting © GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP

American expatriates tend to favour Democratic candidates, but visiting tourists can easily make the pendulum swing the other way.

In the weeks leading up to the November 5 contest, Harry's Bar posts the current score every Wednesday.

On election night the final result will be announced just after voting ends in the US, and well before the new president is declared back home.

© 2024 AFP