Booze and politics have always been the best of friends in one way or another. So it might not be surprising that the Flying Saucer in Columbia cranked up its every-four-years election poll earlier this month by selling $5 beer glasses that sport the faces of presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama.

The bar/restaurant in the Vista has been tracking sales of the pint glasses and displaying the totals on a giant banner over the bar. The numbers as of Sept. 22: McCain 353, Obama 381.

In 2004, Flying Saucer patrons in Columbia foretold the outcome of the presidential election by purchasing more George W. Bush pint glasses (632) than ones of John Kerry (429), says Flying Saucer general manager Michael Derby.

And if Flying Saucer sales nationwide are an electoral indicator, come November we might be looking at an Obama administration.

Barack Obama will defeat John McCain to win the presidency Nov. 4, if sales of beer pint glasses can foretell the winning candidate. Flying Saucer, a restaurant/bar in the Vista, is selling pint glasses emblazoned with Obama’s and McCain’s pictures and tracking the sales. So far Obama is in the lead. Photo by Matt Alsup

The U.S. senator from Illinois is ahead of the U.S. senator from Arizona by about 600 pint glasses for all 13 Flying Saucer locations across the country, says Shannon Wynne, owner of the Texas-based chain.

“It’s not a pure tally, but it’s a popular tally,” Wynne says, adding that his stores have blown through half of the 20,000 political pint glasses he initially bought.

In Columbia, customers buying Obama glasses are tipping noticeably better, says bartender Frank Osczepinski, 25. Others on staff have noticed the same, Osczepinski says.

Derby says he sent emails to the Young Democrats and College Republicans at USC urging them to come in and support their candidate. But he says he thinks the tally reflects the general public without any inflation from either campaign.

Obama’s South Carolina campaign director, Trav Robertson, said he was unaware of the Flying Saucer contest.

McCain’s communications director for the Southeast, Mario Diaz, said he was traveling and too busy to email a response or comment.

As for the legitimacy of the pint glasses poll, it is impossible for anyone to tamper with the contest results, Derby says, because management keeps a paper trail and has a computer in the back dedicated to tracking the inventory and keeping the numbers 100 percent accurate.

But that doesn’t stop someone from coming in and ordering, say, a dozen Obama glasses so he can “take them home and shoot them,” as manager Will Cauthen says he overheard happen when the contest first geared up. Either way it chalked up more points for Obama that day. 

In fact, Derby says he ordered 100 fewer Obama glasses than McCain glasses because he thought the Flying Saucer generally catered to a more conservative crowd based on its location. This week, he plans to order about 500 more of each.

But bars aren’t the only places where post hoc fallacies can indicate the outcomes of presidential elections.

Since 2000, buycostumes.com, which describes itself as the world’s largest online retailer of costumes and accessories, has accurately foretold who the next president would be by tallying sales of the site’s presidential candidate masks. Obama is up this year with 52 percent of masks sold to 48 percent for McCain, according to the site.

Regardless of which candidate one supports, there’s a lot of beer to be consumed between now and Election Day. And while the presidential pint glasses that Flying Saucer sells are adorned with a logo and the words “no hanging chads,” they do not say anything about a hangover.