Patriot games: the straw vote at Harry’s Bar has been a Paris tradition since 1924.

Voting with Your Gut

The straw vote at Harry’s Bar, in Paris, has predicted the results of the American presidential election as accurately—if more drunkenly—than many more scientific polls

By John von Sothen

In the run-up to the 1924 presidential election, which pitted Republican incumbent Calvin Coolidge against Democrat John W. Davis, the Parisian watering hole Harry’s Bar offered its American patrons something new on the menu: a chance to vote.

Absentee ballots were not yet available to Americans living abroad, and Harry MacElhone, the bar’s namesake and founder, sympathized with expat regulars such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and Ernest Hemingway, who felt excluded.