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Food

The Clintons' Family Cookie Recipe Is Dominating Trump's

Weirdly enough, the winner of the Family Circle Presidential Cookie Poll has gone on to win the actual presidential election in five of the six years in which it has been held.

Depending on which poll numbers you're reading, Hillary Clinton is currently leading Donald Trump by anywhere between six and 11 percentage points. But when it comes to one of the most reliable predictors of the past six presidential elections, the Clintons have already won by a lightly sweetened landslide.

Family Circle magazine has released the results of its 2016 Presidential Cookie Poll and a recipe submitted by Bill Clinton­­—and credited to the entire Clinton family—collected more than three times as many Facebook votes than Melania Trump's bland entry for Star Cookies. More than 2,100 people took time from their busy daily schedules of feeding their ferrets and sending email forwards to vote in the poll. (Right this second, your Trump-loving uncle is leaving a Facebook comment calling out Family Circle for being "lying librul sheeple").

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The winning recipe for the Clinton Family's Chocolate Chip Cookies is a slight variation on the recipe that gave Hillary Clinton the victory in two previous First Lady Cookie polls; her cookies demolished Barbara Bush's own chocolate chip cookie recipe in 1992 and then racked up another not-at-all-meaningless victory over Elizabeth Dole's frankly disgusting-sounding Pecan Rolls in 1996.

Weirdly enough, the winner of the Family Circle First Lady Cookie Contest (which has been renamed the Presidential Cookie Poll, because that makes it waaay less sexist) has gone on to win the actual presidential election in five of the six years in which it has been held. In 2008, Cindy McCain's Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies did beat Michelle Obama's Shortbread Cookies, but obviously the actual election didn't go the McCains' way.

RECIPE: Cookie Dough Cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar's Christina Tosi

Hillary Clinton isn't just a three-time winner of the Cookie Contest; she's also the reason that Family Circle even launched it in the first place. In 1992, during Bill's first presidential campaign, Clinton was repeatedly questioned over having a career that didn't involve wearing an apron. "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas," Hillary said at the time. "But what I decided to do was fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life."

Clinton was widely criticised for the remarks, slammed for disparaging women who chose making cookies and teas over working outside the home—and those who enjoyed it. When Family Circle heard Clinton's comments, they somehow decided to follow them up by getting her to participate in a bake-off against Barbara Bush, the wife of then-Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush. That cookie baking contest has somehow endured for 24 years, which could be why they selected it over, say, ironing races or seeing who could yell "YES DEAR!" at the highest decibel level.

READ MORE: How To Make 5 Types of Cookies from 1 Recipe

We still have a little less than four weeks to see whether a plate of cookies can correctly predict another election. Until then, let's try not to argue about politics when our mouths are full of chocolate chips.