In an election where turnout depends on turnout, voter enthusiasm for one candidate over the other is the key to victory.
And what clearer signal could there be than which candidate (Donald Trump or Kamala Harris) is selling more campaign hats?
Inside a huge gray brick building in New Jersey, workers are producing tens of thousands of Harris and Trump baseball caps.
And forecasters trying to read the nation’s mood may want to take note of the speed – and output – of its assembly lines.
“We’ve worked for every major presidential candidate since 2000,” Mitch Cahn, owner of the Unionwear factory, proudly told DailyMail.com.
Unionwear owner Mitch Cahn holds two of the 5,000 Harris Walz hats made for the campaign daily at his 70,000-square-foot factory in Newark, New Jersey, on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024.
Their 70,000-square-foot factory in Newark is the only union-run baseball cap manufacturer in the U.S. and they’ve been making campaign caps for three decades, starting with Bill Clinton’s run for the White House in 1996. .
But Cahn saw the business really take off with Al Gore’s bid in 2000 and also made caps for John McCain and Barack Obama’s camps in 2008.
Their ability to put ‘Made in USA’ labels on each one is an attraction for both campaigns and for third parties looking to buy caps supporting one candidate or another.
The fact that it is a union store has made it particularly popular for Democratic campaigns.
Amid the hum of machinery, nimble hands are busy assembling ‘Harris-Walz’ hats as quickly as they can.
Cahn told DailyMail.com that his store is producing 100,000 caps a month for early Democratic Party tickets.
In total, the company has manufactured more than 300,000 units in the three months since Harris became the nominee, selling at a dizzying pace compared to previous candidates.
“She outsold Biden a lot, and Biden was in it for a longer period of time,” he said.
In 2020, for example, Cahn was only asked to make 100,000 hats for Joe Biden.
They didn’t sell very well and the president’s re-election campaign was still trying to get rid of them earlier this year before Biden was forced to withdraw his candidacy.
Hillary Clinton fared even worse.
“We only sold about 15,000 hats and we were the main supplier,” said the owner of Unionwear.
Despite being Democrats’ favorite merchandise maker, Unionwear has also received an average of a couple thousand orders for MAGA hats per month.
After crunching the numbers, Cahn revealed that Harris camouflage caps are selling at an unmatched level.
Harris is on a pace, he said, that far surpasses the campaigns of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore combined, and in a much shorter time frame.
He said Hillary Clinton sold 15,000 hats, Gore 100,000 and Biden only 100,000, while 300,000 Harris hats have already been purchased.
Cahn noted that the store made a million units for Barack Obama, but that spanned many years from the course of his campaign and re-election to the end of his presidency.
The Unionwear camouflage cap debuted by Tim Walz shortly after his first speech as Kamala Harris’ vice president pick in early August. Since then, more than 100,000 Harris Walz hats have been sold.
Katy Perry showed who she supports by wearing one of Harris-Walz’s camouflage caps in September.
The camouflage hats first debuted in early August, shortly after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz gave his first speech since being nominated as Harris’ running mate.
After the speech, he posted on X a photo of himself smiling and wearing the new design with the caption “closing out the night.”
Featuring a forest camouflage design and bright orange lettering, the hat immediately flew off the shelves.
The 3,000 camouflage caps that were first offered after Walz’s post in August sold out in 30 minutes at the official Harris campaign store. teen fashion reported.
The caps have been such a success that approximately 50 to 60 percent of Unionwear’s Harris product orders have been for the camouflage and orange design.
And that nature-lover-specific design has exploded among trendy millennials and Gen Z voters.
Celebrities have been seen donning the cap, including pop star and American Idol judge Katy Perry, singer Billie Eilish and Star Wars icon Mark Hamill.
The camouflage style has been popular with residents of Brooklyn who want to be tough and other wealthy coastal neighborhoods that are not close to hunting grounds.
Workers at Unionwear in Newark, New Jersey, make Harris Walz baseball caps on Tuesday, October 22, 2024.
The union-run factory is a favorite of Democrats, who are generally pro-union.
And then there is Trump.
Despite supplying caps to the Trump campaign in 2015, Unionwear was not chosen as its official marketer: it would be Louisiana-based ACE Specialties.
The ACE factory has also been wrapping up a busy election cycle.
This year alone, the Trump campaign has shipped nearly 1.3 million hats, DailyMail.com has learned.
Since January 1, 2023, the campaign has shipped nearly 2.1 million official hats to MAGA customers.
“President Trump is the most iconic presidential candidate in history – from historic rallies that filled Madison Square Garden to record-breaking podcasts with giants like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, and more than 2 million MAGA hats have been distributed to his followers in this cycle,” RNC spokesman Taylor said. Rogers said of the sales.
‘President Trump’s message of hope and his “America First” agenda resonates with working Americans and their families. The momentum is on our side because voters know that Kamala destroyed our country and President Trump is the only one who can do it.”
Despite not being the official supplier of MAGA hats, Unionwear regularly receives orders for what Cahn calls “knockoffs.”
He claims his and other unofficial Trump-supporting hats have completely taken over the MAGA market.
“The Make America Great Again hat is a completely different animal than the Harris hat, and that’s because that market has been completely taken over by people selling knockoffs,” he said.
Still, Cahn said, in an average election year his store will receive approximately 25,000 orders for MAGA hats.
‘I doubt if you went to a Trump rally you would find more than a handful of hats that people actually bought during the campaign.
“If you look at pictures of a Trump rally, you’ll see that every hat is different,” Cahn explained. “That’s not how mass manufacturing works.”
Overall, Unionwear sells far more hats to Democrats than Republicans: 90 percent of its orders come from the left and only 10 percent from the right.
A supporter of Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump looks on wearing a MAGA hat.
Even President Joe Biden has donned a Trump hat, clearly in jest.
Union workers sew Harris Walz hats at New Jersey factory
However, merchandise manufactured in the United States has a higher cost.
Cahn said the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) devastated American manufacturers.
“After NAFTA and then the WTO, importing products became much cheaper,” he told DailyMail.com. “And hats are a very high labor cost item relative to the value of everything else.”
“So this was one of the first items to move completely overseas,” the business owner added. “It made it much easier to import products from China, and that really killed the domestic hat business.”
But consumers increasingly value the patriotic moniker, and “Made in America” is making a comeback.
Cahn says 50 to 60 percent of the caps his store makes are Harris Walz camouflage caps.
“There is definitely a growing interest in making American products, much more now than, say, 10 years ago, and it will only grow in the coming years,” he said.
Cahn hopes that the United States hosting the World Cup in 2026 will boost sales of American-made products.
Two years later, in 2028, the Olympic Games will be held in Los Angeles, which is another potential benefit for business.
When asked which candidate he supports, Cahn gave a politically savvy answer.
‘I think both candidates have a plan to help the national manufacturing industry.
“I think the Harris plan will help domestic manufacturing workers more, while the Trump plan will help domestic manufacturing companies more,” he said. “Both things will affect us positively.”
However, he added, “we are waiting to see what happens on November 5 before making our plans for next year.”