East Hampton's Monogram Shop Tallies Presidential Election

Like in years past, the race for president of the United States is being loosely gauged locally by the sale of plastic cups at The Monogram Shop in East Hampton Village.

Tucked comfortably at 7 Newton Lane, the antique/gift shop has been keeping tabs on the presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton by keeping a tally on the sale of small plastic cups emblazoned with the candidates’ names and the names of their vice presidential running mates. Acting as a localized poll between the presidential hopefuls, the current standing had Mrs. Clinton leading with 4,305 cups sold to 3,188 of Mr. Trump’s cups as of Monday afternoon.

While this may not appear to have a huge impact on the actual election, The Monogram Shop’s cup tally winner has won the race for the White House for the last three elections.

Valerie Smith, the shop’s founder and owner, first started selling the cups and tallying the sales back in 2004 during the race between then-President George W. Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry.

“I’m cuckoo about politics,” Ms. Smith said. “I follow it all very closely and get worked up about it. I started doing it around the time of the primaries and once everything was narrowed down to the final two, I started keeping track of who sold more.”

Ms. Smith said that she buys the cups from a manufacturer in Texas and displays the cups in the front of the store, with the current tally in the window.

“I didn’t have any kind of plan with this. It was just something I did for my own amusement,” she said. “I honestly didn’t expect the real interest from the community. Sometimes people come up to me and ask, ‘Are you gonna do the cups again next year?’”

In the past three elections, Ms. Smith said that the cups are purchased with “mischievous intentions.”

“People come in, see the cups for sale and go, ‘Oh, this is perfect!’ They buy six or seven cups for their dinner parties and serve them to their family and friends so when they see what’s on the cups, they go, ‘What the?!’ It’s really funny.”

“It’s fun to hear people who haven’t been here before walk by with locals and see the cups and wonder what it is,” said Devon Menges, one of Ms. Smith’s daughters who also works at the shop. “Then the locals explain what it’s for and the visitors think it’s hilarious. People buy these cups and treat them as collectors items. They get really into them.”

For this year’s election, however, those “mischievous intentions” are harder to find, as this race has been one of the most polarizing in recent history.

“There’s no laughter. There’s no joke with these cups,” Ms. Smith said. “People come in, they buy their six Hillary cups or Trump cups, pay for them, and leave. I think everybody’s really walking on eggshells and are very sensitive. I mean, I’m not gonna say that people don’t come up to me and whisper, ‘Why are they buying the Trump cups?’ The Hillary people don’t want to misbehave and ignite anything in the Trump people, and vice versa. It’s dangerous to get into the conversation.”

“When people buy the cups, they feel like they’re contributing to the campaign,” Ms. Menges said.

Ms. Smith said that there have been no confrontations between Clinton’s supporters and Trump’s supporters in the shop, though she’s seen a confrontation between presidential candidate supporters before.

“I had one hideous thing happen when Obama was running for his second term in 2012,” she said. “There was this little 9-year-old boy came in with one Obama cup in his hand and I thought, ‘This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!’ He had his three dollars in his hands and he was going to by the cup. Then this guy, this dude, looked over at him and said, ‘Young man, that is the biggest mistake you’re ever gonna make in your life.’”

Ms. Smith’s response was swift.

“I threw the dude out of the store,” she said.

Ms. Smith said that the final tally of the cups for the past elections has been “around the 3,000/4,000 mark.” Ms. Smith said that the store sold 1,174 cups of both Clinton and Trump on July 17, just days before both candidates were announced as the presidential nominees by their parties. Since then, Mrs. Smith said that Clinton has been slowly pulling ahead of Trump, being over 1,000 cups ahead of Trump for the past month and a half.

“I’m very happy with the cups,” Ms. Smith said. “People seem happy with them and they’re wonderful about it. One woman came in and I said “How many cups would you like?’ and she said, ‘Well, only one. I mean, I only have one vote,’ and I told her, “Lady this isn’t a vote, it’s a cup!’”