While everyone looks at the polls or the odds in Vegas, some people are looking to Halloween masks to predict the winner of the 2016 election…

Can Halloween tell us who’ll win the White House? Apparently, the sale of candidate masks is an eerily accurate crystal ball.

According to one costume industry index, mask sales have correctly predicted the outcome of every presidential election since 1996. According to another index – which goes back further – they’ve been right since 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s mug outsold Jimmy Carter’s by 20 percent.

Being No. 1 this year, however, might indicate something else.

Kim Hermann, who along with his wife, Betty, owns Novelties Unlimited in Ghent, says this election is “so contentious, most people buying candidate costumes are doing it to be negative. They’re planning to suggest something other than presidential behavior.”

Like Hillary Clinton in a convict suit. Or Donald Trump with a license to grope.

“Oh, it’s definitely all about mocking them,” said Chloe Nelson, a manager at Spirit Halloween, a chain of 1,200 seasonal stores that puts out one of the presidential mask indexes.

At Nelson’s Greenbrier Mall store, one couple planning a Halloween party bought both candidate masks so they can entertain their guests with a night of bickering: You’re unfit. No, you are.

It’s early – the big costume rush is still a week away – but Betty Hermann was on the phone Wednesday trying to order more Trump masks. Likenesses of Hillary remained in stock – a full-head latex caricature for $25.

Via: pilotonline