Clinton wins Grubhub presidential ‘debate’ as diners cast votes with special discount codes

The hungry have voted, and they’re with Hillary Clinton having won the first US presidential debate this week. That’s according to an innovative promotion by food delivery service Grubhub that gave people discounts for sharing who they felt won.

Those placing orders on Monday night were invited to share “Which side do you crave?” using IMWITHHER or IMWITHHIM codes along with their order, to indicated if they felt Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump had won. Those that did were rewarded with at five percent discount.

The results are in, and Clinton won by a huge margin, 82 percent to 18 percent. She also won by a big margin on a state-by-state basis. New York and California were the strongest for Clinton; Colorado was the biggest turnout for Trump, though he gained only 26 percent of the votes there:

Grubhub’s promotion also allowed it to look at the types of food ordered by those who supported either candidate. Grubhub said that Clinton supporters were more diverse in orders overall, with Indian especially popular. Trump supporters went mostly for Chinese food, along with American and Italian.

The poll is unscientific, of course — but it was a fun and innovative way for the company to get its customers who support either candidate excited about the debate. On Facebook, a post with the results has nearly 1,000 reactions and perhaps the most calm and unusual comments about the election.

On Twitter, it gave Grubhub plenty of relevant fodder for debate night, such as:

For more about how Grubhub created the campaign in a short period, as part of its move to be more agile with marketing, see our interview with Grubhub CMO Barbara Martin Coppola.

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Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan is a Founding Editor of Marketing Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also serves as Chief Content Officer for Third Door Media, which publishes Marketing Land and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He has a personal blog called Daggle (and keeps his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.