Students Pick Obama
Posted: October 13th, 2008, 7:19 pm
AP News wrote:
Today the results are official as students pick Obama in Scholastic voting.
• 57% chose Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.
• 39% chose Republican Sen. John McCain.
The student voters — about 250,000 this year — have an 88% prediction rate. Only twice since 1940 have their results been at odds with the nation's: in 1948, when Harry Truman defeated Thomas Dewey, and in 1960, when John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon. (To students' credit, their balloting closed before the televised Nixon-Kennedy debates that historians consider a game-changer.)
"Kids do listen to their parents, and they discuss politics in their families," says Rebecca Bondor, editor in chief of Scholastic's 31 classroom magazines. Students these days also have easier access to information, so more "are forming their own opinions on who they want to vote for."
And their own rumors. In the thick of the race, fifth-grade teacher Michelle Gay at W.J. Carroll Intermediate in Daphne, Ala., had to squash a school bus rumor that claimed Obama didn't believe in God.
In Gay's classroom, Obama won by a single vote. She was surprised at the results. Alabama is a solidly Republican state, and most of her students are white. But in this case, she says, youth trumped race.
"My students, they do not make a big issue over race at all," Gay says. "I do think they look at Obama as this young, good-looking man who has charisma and personality."
