Since 1940, student voters have accurately picked all but two presidents

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27172326/

The youth vote is in, and it says Obama will win

By Laura T. Coffey
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 9:05 a.m. CT, Tues., Oct. 14, 2008

Move over, pundits. Kids across America have got the 2008 presidential election all figured out.

In a poll of a quarter of a million students who are too young to vote, Democratic nominee Barack Obama sailed to victory with 57 percent of the vote while Republican nominee John McCain received 39 percent.

It may be easy to dismiss the poll — orchestrated every four years by Scholastic, a children’s publishing and media company — as mere child’s play. But here’s the uncanny thing about this educational exercise: Since 1940, student voters have accurately chosen all but two presidents. snip

The two off-base years were 1948, when students picked Thomas Dewey over Harry Truman, and 1960, when they chose Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy.

“Dewey-Truman was really close … and newspapers got that wrong, too,” noted Suzanne Freeman, executive editor of Scholastic Kids Press Corps and Scholastic News Online.

And officials with Scholastic like to point out that students cast their votes for Nixon and JFK before the first televised debate between those two candidates proved to be such a key turning point in that election.

[LisaM]

1. What about 2000?

Did they pick Gore?

[Bill McBlueState]

2. So actual voters...

consistently come to the same conclusion as eight-year-olds when it comes to picking the President. I guess that's not surprising; most of the actual voters I know have reasoning skills similar to those of eight-year-olds.

[NNN0LHI]

4. Or the kids are listening to their parents discussing the election and are swayed by that?

I am not sure?

Don

[sandnsea]

5. That would be the conclusion

my reasoning skills would lead me to.

[TahitiNut]

6. I'd guess it's an interplay between two significant factors/forces.

Let's first of all keep in mind that there's NOT a 1-to-1 correspondence between voters and school children. We therefore need to puzzle out the correlation somehow being strong despite that.

While DUers might not be as aware of the fact as some that politics just isn't discussed that much in many families as WE'VE experienced, that's pretty much so. I'd guess about half of households with kids are pretty much devoid of political discussions ... at least devoid enough that the kids don't 'inherit' their parents'/grandparent's preferences. (I'd also guess that households with kids are more likely to be sensitive to politics ... even with less time to devote to politics.) Kids, however, are pretty free of ideology and bias ... so the "independent" kids (from families without political discussion) are far more subject to peer pressure ... "go along to get along" with other kids.

So, we have "opinion leaders" in the social context of school children. Trend-setters. It's also how fads and kid fashions and pop culture is set ... some are just more influential than others.

This might also explain the amplification ... having a result from the school polling that's more definite earlier in the election season than is evident in public polling. (I'm thinking it's like DNA testing.)

[elocs]

3. In the middle school I worked at on election day the kids picked Obama by 78%.

In fact, at all the schools where I worked I found overwhelming support by the kids for Obama.