If kids could vote, they'd reluctantly elect Clinton

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 19 October 2016

In every year but two since 1940, Scholastic's poll of school children's pick for president has accurately predicted the outcome on Election Day. This year, the under-18 crowd is 52 percent for Democrat Hillary Clinton and 35 percent for Republican Donald Trump.

Another 13 percent of the kids who participated took advantage of the option to write in an alternative candidate, a rate Scholastic says is "unusually high." Among write-in options, Libertarian Gary Johnson, Green Party nominee Jill Stein, and Sen. Bernie Sanders were the three most popular names.

The survey of 153,000 children is not scientifically representative, but only in 1948 and 1960 has this poll failed to predict the winner of the presidential election. Intriguingly, if this year's results are viewed by state, neither major party candidate wins Washington, D.C., and literally all of the states Trump wins form a contiguous mass sandwiched by two large blue regions that even include Texas (TEXAS!).

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.