Obama Wins Student Mock Election

Naureen S. Malik reports on the election. The next generation of voters also gave Barack Obama a landslide victory. A mock election involving one million of America’s youth–the vast majority of whom are too young to vote–went 60%-36% for Obama. It was also a record turnout for the online, K-12 student-only election hosted by the Youth Leadership Initiative of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics . The polls were open Oct. 20-30. Louisville government teacher Bill Wyss found that freshmen and sophomores at his school tended to support Republican candidate John McCain while juniors and even more seniors went for Obama. Wyss said his students did agree on one thing: “They all wanted to see Tina Fey” on Saturday Night Live. Encouraging civic participation and discourse is at the heart of the YLI’s bipartisan efforts. Meg Heubeck , YLI’s director of instruction and a former teacher, said that politics has embraced a “talk-show culture” that is polarizing the ... (link)