10 Weird Presidential Election Predictions

From Cosmopolitan

Sure, you could constantly refresh FiveThirtyEight to get a prediction of who will win the presidential election Tuesday. Or you could consult the real experts: a billy goat, a monkey, and two sharks. People (and animals) around the world have predicted presidential elections in off-the-wall ways for decades. And this year, these “psychics” are pretty divided about whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be our next president.

1. A “psychic” billy goat from Scotland named Boots chose a piece of paper that had Clinton’s name on it, thus predicting her victory. He also did so while wearing a pretty fantastic scarf. According to The Scotsman, Boots correctly predicted the result of the Brexit vote this year.

2. Nickelodeon’s annual “Kids Pick the President” project has accurately predicted every presidential election since 1988, except for the 2004 race. In an online poll, 53 percent of kids picked Clinton, 26 percent picked Trump, and 11 percent picked Gary Johnson, the Washington Post reports.

3. A “mystical” Chinese monkey named Geda, who often predicts the winners of European soccer games, chose Trump as the winner of the U.S. election by choosing a banana near a cardboard cutout of the GOP candidate. Then, Geda even planted a kiss on cardboard Trump, according to the Washington Post.

4. Spirit Halloween’s sales of candidate masks have accurately predicted the election since 1996. This year, Trump steamrolled Clinton with 55 percent of the mask sales, and customers surveyed said they’d rather dress like him on Halloween, according to NBC News.

5. Family Circle magazine’s cookie-recipe poll has predicted five out the last six general elections. This year, Bill Clinton just submitted Hillary’s old recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. But he still won, with 1,623 likes on Facebook compared to 535 likes for Melania Trump’s star-shaped sugar cookies, CNN notes.

6. An elementary school in Yorktown Heights, New York, has correctly predicted the winner of the presidential election for the past 48 years. They teach students about each candidate’s platform, at first under the names Candidate A and Candidate B, before telling them which candidate they side with. This year, Clinton won 52 percent of the vote and Trump won 43 percent, CBS News reports.

7. Two sharks, one assigned to Trump and the other assigned to Clinton, took part in a “race” sponsored by Nova Southestern University in Florida. Each shark was tagged and researchers tallied how many miles each one traveled in the ocean during a set time period. The Trump shark beat the Clinton shark, 652.44 miles to 510.07 miles.

8. Scholastic’s student vote has accurately predicted every election but two since 1940. This year, 52 percent of kids voted for Clinton, 35 percent voted for Trump, and 13 percent voted for write-in candidates including Gary Johnson, Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein.

9. A shop owner in East Hampton, New York, has correctly predicted presidential winners since 2004 by measuring how many cups are sold with the logos of each candidate. So far, Clinton is winning, with 4,946 cups to Trump’s 3,388, according to the New York Times.

10. 7-Eleven stores across the country have let customers vote with their coffee cups. So far, 31 percent of cups have gone to Clinton and 29 percent have gone to Trump. But the winner, with 40 percent, is actually the purple “Speak Up” cup, which allows people to “write in” a candidate of their choice. Clinton technically has the lead, but the real winner is no one, which actually is pretty symbolic of this election.

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