Will Obama “outcup” McCain in 7-Eleven coffee cup election poll?

7-Eleven is putting a creative spin on U.S. presidential elections. The company is conducting its own opinion poll and will gauge people’s election choices by its coffee cup sales. Starting this Wednesday, 7-Eleven customers will have three choices for their hot beverage cups: blue for Democrats, red for Republicans, and regular 7-Eleven cups for “undecided” or “indifferent” voters. The cup poll will run until Election Day and will finish on November 4th. The colour of each cup purchased will be automatically recorded in 7-Eleven’s registry, allowing the company to display cup sales information on their website and update it on a regular basis. 7-Eleven ran similar cup polls before 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Interestingly, the results of these 7-Eleven cup polls closely matched the official election results.

Here is stats from two past U.S. elections and 7-Eleven polls:

2000 election*
Presidential candidate	U.S. voters	7-Election voters
George W. Bush	47.9%	51.2%
Al Gore	48.4%	48.9%
2004 election
George W. Bush	50.7%	51 %
John Kerry	48.3%	49%
*Al Gore won the popular vote. Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-7eleven_29bus.State.Edition1.1adbf8f.html