Forget the Pollsters, Check Out Harry's Bar to Find Out Who'll Be Next US President

Harry's Bar in Paris where patrons have successfully picked 17 of the last 19 US presidents says it will be Obama in 2012.

Published

7 months ago

Categories

Seriously?

Topics

US Politics, Seriously?

People

Barack Obama, Mitt Romney

Places

United States of America, France, Paris

Transcript

Barack Obama's re-election is almost a sure thing, according to U.S. patrons at a Parisian pub. Canny American expats at Harry's Bar have successfully predicted the outcomes of 17 of the last 19 U.S. presidential races. This year, the bar's traditional pre-election straw poll gave the nod to Obama, who leads by a narrow margin in several key battleground states. (SOUNDBITE) (English) HARRY'S BAR MANAGER, ALAIN DA SILVA, SAYING: "The score tonight is 148 for Romney, 214 for Obama. (Journalist's question: "So Obama leading?") Leading for the moment, still four days to go, the next ballot will be on Tuesday night at about midnight." Manager Alain da Silva says the vote is a time-honoured tradition for his American patrons and says the success rate is because the expatriates have their fingers on the pulse of U.S. politics. A pulse that's read so accurately that roughly every four years around the first week of November, Harry's Bar can expect a call from the U.S. embassy in Paris unofficially asking how the straw poll went.