If grade and high school students could vote, Barack Obama would become the next president of the United States by a landslide margin, according to a study conducted by the University Center for Politics.
More than three million grade school students voted in the 2008 Youth Leadership Initiative Mock Election last week, and the results were tabulated and released Friday. Students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Department of Defense schools participated in the election, which used “cyber ballots” mirroring those actually found in the students’ local areas, a Center for Politics press release stated.
Dan Keyserling, deputy director for communications at the Center of Politics and former Cavalier Daily executive editor, noted that the goal of the mock election is to encourage civic education. In response to this year’s participation numbers, which exceeded previous years’, Keyserling said, “I think that it’s a great triumph.”
The election results showed a large amount of support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who won the election with slightly more than 60 percent of the vote, according to the release. McCain followed with slightly less than 36 percent of the vote, and the remaining percentage of the votes cast were split among candidates from other political parties, which varied from state to state.
The results, though, come with a disclaimer that the mock election is an “academic exercise,” and the survey is neither “scientific” nor “designed to predict the course of the general election.
“The views expressed in the results are those of participating students only, and does not constitute an endorsement of any particular candidate or idea,” the release states. “Nor are the results designed to serve either prediction of, or commentary on, the regular general election by either the Youth Leadership Initiative or the University of Virginia Center for Politics.”
—compiled by Tom Christensen
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