Have you ever heard of a sweet poll? It’s one that appeals to the palate. Apparently, Icelanders voted with their mouth in Saturday’s parliamentary election.
At Dunkin Donuts, they were offered a choice of 12 different types of doughnuts during the days leading up to the election , each marked with the letter and color of a different political party running for parliament. Sales of each type of doughnut were then registered at the end of each day and a chart prepared on Friday and posted on Facebook at 5 pm to show the ratio of each type of doughnut sold.
Guess what? The results gave a better prediction of the outcome of the election than did any poll published on Friday, including the Gallup poll.
The largest error turned out to be in the doughnut maker’s prediction of support for the Pirate Party, or about 3.6 percent. Gallup, by contrast, overestimated the Pirates’ following by 3.5 percent. Dunkin’s poll underestimated the Progressive Party’s following by only 1.1 percent, the best estimate of any poll.
