According to Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed's office, more than 4,800 students participated in this year's Mock Presidential Primary. The Secretary of State's office has worked diligently in recent years to develop grade-appropriate curricula aligned with state and federal standards to teach civics and voting; the mock primary is just one piece of this effort.
Here's how things shaped up in the Democratic Presidential Primary (3,519 students voted):
- Joe Biden - 1%
- Hillary Clinton - 23%
- Chris Dodd - 0%
- John Edwards - 1%
- Mike Gravel - 1%
- Dennis Kucinich - 1%
- Barack Obama - 73%
Some observations on these results: First, Mike Gravel is not exactly a household name, so I had to
Google him and apparently there is a man by this name running for president. (I guess I'm not smarter than a fifth-grader!) Second, John Edwards only garnered 1%?
Here's the results from the Republican primary, where 1,300 students cast votes:
- Rudy Guiliani - 3%
- Mike Huckabee- 25%
- Duncan Hunter - 2%
- Alan Keyes - 2%
- John McCain - 51%
- Ron Paul - 7%
- Mitt Romney - 8%
- Fred Thompson - 2%
Again, I flew to Google to find out more about this Duncan Hunter person and yup,
he's got a hat in the ring, too. Guess I need to read that issue of
Newsweek on my nightstand more carefully...
You can learn more about the Mock Primary on the
Secretary of State's Web site.
Did your school participate in this year's Mock Election? If so, how did things go? What did your students learn as a result of this process? What did you or your staff learn?
