The election is just one day away, and the latest polls from The New York Times, NBC News, Bloomberg, et al have shown increasingly tight margins between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump. Most of these polls project that Clinton is leading but by less than five percent. However, Nickelodeon's 2016 edition of Kids Pick the President shows that if only kids were voting, Clinton would win by a much wider margin.
As part of its "Kids' Vote" initiative, Nickelodeon gives kids the chance to amplify their voices and learn more about the electoral process. Kids may not be able to vote in the actual election, but between Oct. 28 and Nov. 5, more than 900,000 kids voted online for who they wanted to see become president, and on Saturday night, Nickelodeon announced on its website that Clinton was the winner. According to Time, the former Secretary of State received 53 percent of the 905,928 votes cast, with Trump in second place at 36 percent and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in third place at 11 percent.
According to Nickelodeon, the Kids Pick the President results have correctly predicted the outcomes of six of the past seven presidential elections. The only time the kids' preferred presidential candidate was not elected was in 2004, when they picked John Kerry over George W. Bush, Time reported.
Before kids cast their votes on Nickelodeon's website, they had the opportunity to view short videos about each of the nominees. In the video introducing Clinton, kids learn about her career, including her time as First Lady, senator, and Secretary of State. This isn't the first time Clinton has won kids' support, either. In a mock presidential election conducted earlier this year, schoolchildren had a chance to "go to the polls," and of the roughly 153,000 students that cast ballots, U.S.A. Today reported that Clinton won in a landslide with 52 percent of the votes.
This mock election for students has been held once every four years since 1940, and according to U.S.A. Today, kids have correctly predicted the outcome of all 13 presidential elections since 1964. This year's mock election results also had Clinton winning a whopping 436 electoral votes — she would need 270 to win the actual election — whereas Trump only managed to garner 99. Students' votes also had Clinton carrying numerous battleground states, including Ohio and Arizona, as well as typically red states like Texas and Utah.
As kids can't actually vote, the outcomes of these two mock elections don't necessarily mean that Clinton will win the election, but it is valuable all the same to see how kids are making themselves heard in the electoral process.
