GILL — If the votes cast in a nationwide mock election by nearly 75,000 students from more than 150 high schools across the country are any indication, the next president of the United States will be Hillary Clinton.
The voters were all participants in this year’s VOTES Project (Voting Opportunities for Teenagers in Every State), the nation’s largest mock election for high school students.
The VOTES Project was founded in 1988 by two teachers at Northfield Mount Hermon School. Over the past quarter-century, the results of the mock election have correctly predicted the actual winner in six of the last seven U.S. presidential elections. The one “off” year was 2004, when incumbent President George W. Bush beat Sen. John Kerry.
One thing that makes this mock election unique is that it simulates the Electoral College, which means the results of the popular vote from each state are converted into electoral college votes. To win, a candidate has to win at least 270 electoral votes. In this year’s election, Clinton won 332 electoral votes, while Donald Trump earned 206 electoral votes.
Northfield Mount Hermon history teacher Jim Shea, a co-founder of the VOTES Project, said one of the most surprising things about this year’s election was how close the race was in many states. “In more than a dozen states, the race was decided by less than 100 votes, even though, in some cases, several thousand votes were cast in those states.”
Shea said he was also surprised by the strong showing of third-party candidates in almost all states. “In total, third-party candidates won more than 19 percent of the vote, which is higher than in any VOTES election since the days of Ross Perot and Ralph Nader. In at least three states, they played a major role as ‘spoiler’ candidates.”
The key to the election, said Shea, was the fact that Clinton won just about every swing state including North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. The two states that perhaps returned the most surprising results were Georgia, which went for Clinton, and Wisconsin, which went for Trump. Trump also won the hotly contested state of Florida.
Each of the schools that participated held elections on different days over the course of the last two weeks. The final tally, however, was not revealed until Sunday night during a gala election night “broadcast” conducted in James Gymnasium on the Northfield Mount Hermon campus and streamed live over the web.
A recording of the broadcast can be viewed at www.votes2016.org.