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Need a drink to forget this stressful election season? Well, in one Paris bar, predicting the outcome of the U.S. presidential election over cocktails is a long tradition. For more than a century, a straw poll taken there has been pretty accurate at predicting the winner. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley tells us more.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Harry's Bar has been a watering hole for American expats in Paris since 1911. College pennants line the walls of this cozy establishment, which claims to have invented the Bloody Mary. In 1924, the Harry's Bar straw poll was born. Franz-Arthur MacElhone is the bar's fourth-generation owner.
FRANZ-ARTHUR MACELHONE: So 100 years ago, Americans couldn't vote in Europe. And you had loads of Americans in the neighborhood, and my great-granddad thought, we're going to do a straw vote - a fake vote - and make a party out of it.
BEARDSLEY: Americans abroad can vote today, but Harry's straw poll has endured. It's only been wrong three times in the last century. This year, the original wooden ballot box is set up at the end of the bar.
DOUGLAS KENNEDY: (Laughter).
BEARDSLEY: Like Ernest Hemingway once did, expat writer Douglas Kennedy pushes his ballot through the slot.
KENNEDY: I'm very honored, as an American writer who the French seem to like, you know, to be voting here today. I remember coming here in 1974 when I was a 19-year-old kid and could just about afford a beer, not a cocktail.
BEARDSLEY: Bob Vallier with Democrats Abroad says there are 6 million Americans living overseas but only 1 in 6 votes. The reason? - the U.S. is one of the few nations that requires its citizens abroad to also pay income tax back home.
BOB VALLIER: So people want to avoid getting caught in that net, and they think that voting might be some sort of trap. It's absolutely not. Your ability to vote has nothing to do with your tax status.
BEARDSLEY: Many expats don't bother voting because they think they've left America and its problems behind. But the choice of U.S. president impacts the world, says Renita Raudonikyte. This Lithuanian says it'll be a disaster if Donald Trump wins - he'd let Russia take Ukraine, and her Baltic country might be next.
RENITA RAUDONIKYTE: In Lithuania, since everything that's been going on, like, all my family that's there, they all have, like, a bag packed and all this. Like, it's scary.
(CROSSTALK)
BEARDSLEY: But it doesn't stop her enjoying a conversation and cocktail with Frances Jones from New Jersey, who she suspects has cast her Harry's ballot for Trump.
FRANCES JONES: There's two sides, obviously, to everything. And I feel like you can vote with your heart and your feelings, or you can vote with your head and your pocket. I'm stressed because I think it's going to go down to the wire.
BEARDSLEY: So you have your Harris and Trump piles?
MACELHONE: Yeah, and I'm going to count the whole thing afterwards.
BEARDSLEY: Once a week, bar owner MacElhone sorts and counts the ballots cast by passport-holding Americans and writes the tally on the mirror above the bar.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Wow.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Oh, it's a close one.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Wow.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Pretty tight.
BEARDSLEY: Harris 63, Trump 58.
JONES: Now, this is why I'm stressed. Do you see how close it is right now?
BEARDSLEY: Business consultant and Kamala Harris supporter Michael Foster can't believe it either.
MICHAEL FOSTER: I thought that being polled in France, it would not be as close as it is. That's scary.
BEARDSLEY: Tourist Mitchel Talisman is furious - not about politics, but because he just wanted to enjoy a cocktail.
MITCHEL TALISMAN: I came to Paris to not have to think about the election. It's good to get away from all of that.
BEARDSLEY: But this election year, that's easier said than done. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, at Harry's Bar in Paris.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE AUDIBLES & SAVANNAH BLEU'S "NOT THE SAME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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