No Holes to Poke in Presidential Doughnut Poll

My wife handed me the phone, chuckling.

“They want to talk to an older male,” she told me. “Is that you?”

“Hello,” I said. “Older Male here. Can I help you?”

The caller, it turned out, was a pollster who needed the opinions of Older Males on a political race.

I declined.

Polls are bunk, I said, using a term that went out with Harry Truman so I could impress the caller, a Younger Female, with the seriousness and hard work that Older Male has poured into his role.

I don’t want to tell some candidate what to think about what they should think, I told her.

Thinking is hard, lonely work, I said. It’s best done without a committee of millions.

Groucho Marx--an Older Male reference as foreign to my new friend as Ethelred the Unready--once said he wouldn’t join a club that would accept someone like him as a member.

So no, Older Male won’t vote for a candidate who needs the opinions of someone like himself, and no, he won’t participate in something as corrupting to the democratic process as a preelection political poll, but thank you all the same for asking.

I hung up, bursting with Older Male righteousness.

But if she had offered me doughnuts--that would be a whole different story.

I’m all behind the doughnut poll.

In a stunning confirmation of the link between dough and politics, the Winchell’s chain is offering its customers a chance to cast their ballots early and often.

Here’s how it works:

A red-frosted cruller is a vote for Gore.

A blue-topped star is a vote for Bush.

To buy an immense, white-frosted gut bomb is to declare yourself one of the many “undecideds.”

Older Male, I must tell you, frowns on the undecideds.

He’s the most indecisive man who has ever lived, but he’s still not sure how anyone still can be dithering over the choice between Bush and Gore. By the way, Older Male loves the verb, “to dither.”

There are no independent doughnuts. It would have been easy for Winchell’s to slather green frosting on a doughnut shaped something like a Corvair, but Ralph Nader has no place at Winchell’s table.

“We wanted to keep it simple,” said the Orange County-based chain’s marketing chief Ron Roberts, sounding something like the Commission on Presidential Debates. “Doughnuts are meant to be fun.”

Now they’re news as well.

Conducted in all 118 of Winchell’s California stores, the poll started Tuesday and will last through election day. The results so far should buoy the Democrats. Al Gore: 1,152. George W. Bush: 1,067. Undecided: 1,045.

At the Winchell’s in Camarillo, the pattern was similar. Gore: 9. Bush: 6. Undecided: 6.

In the spirit of full disclosure, it should be noted that the red on a Gore cruller looks like cherries, while the blue on Bush’s star looks like Nyquil.

In addition, the assistant manager who bakes the doughnuts and tallies the daily results in Camarillo is a supporter of Gore.

“He’s better for immigrants,” said Javier Carrillo, a native of Guadalajara who has been in the United States for 10 years. “And he’ll be better for the economy.”

Republicans would disagree, but few would argue against Winchell’s interest in promoting participatory democracy as well as doughnuts.

It’s too bad, though, that the corporate types couldn’t have had more fun coming up with doughnut equivalents for candidates that many voters find a bit hard to swallow in the first place.

For instance, they could have marketed the Al Gore: “Maple frosting on Monday, coconut on Tuesday, and on Wednesday--well, who knows?”

Or the George W. Bush: “Sugar-glazed on top. Air inside. Highly flavorable.”

Or the Dick Cheney: “Old-fashioned plain doughnut. Soaked in oil and awfully rich.”

Or the Joe Lieberman: “The holier doughnut.”

The strategy could even apply to local ballot measures, like the attempt by private hospitals to seize the county’s $260-million tobacco settlement.

“The Measure O: A banquet in a single doughnut, a feast, a four-star meal, a--Hey! Bring back that doughnut!”

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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.