One Elementary School In New York Always Correctly Predicts Presidential Election — Who Won Mock Election This Year?

One elementary school in New York always correctly predicts presidential election outcomes. The Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Yorktown Heights, New York, holds a mock election every election cycle, with every class casting votes to determine who they think the next U.S. president will be. According to Townhall on Saturday, the “melting pot” of students at Benjamin Franklin have not been wrong since the first election in 1968.

On Wednesday, the elementary school took to the voting booths again to predict who the winner of the upcoming 2016 presidential election will be, and had a “clear winner” by the end of the school day.

Benjamin Franklin Elementary school has correctly predicted
every Presidential #Election since 1968.#ImWIthHerhttps://t.co/43zrHTzlTf

— KP ??????????? (@Fam4Fun) November 6, 2016

Benjamin Franklin Elementary School opened its doors nearly 50 years ago in Westchester County, promising “education today for a better tomorrow.” Principal Patricia Moore said they’re proud of the mock election tradition that was started in 1968, and they continue with it every four years. Moore went on to tell CBS News on Friday that the nation can never skip an election, so “we can’t skip it” in our school. Moore also said that since Benjamin Franklin Elementary School is a melting pot of students, with “minority groups, students that speak English as a second language, white collar, blue collar,” that the results of their mock election are very representative of the nation’s population.

“Every year since Nixon, we’ve correctly predicted [the outcome of the election] based on the popular vote. We do our own electoral votes based on enrollment in the classes.”

Months before the elementary school students cast their votes, they learn about the candidates — only known to them as “Candidate A” and “Candidate B.” Nothing is known about each candidate’s personality or popularity when votes are cast almost a week before the real presidential election. Instead, the students get to focus only on the “issues at hand” and exact facts, both of which are put on two sides of a spreadsheet before each class, kindergarten through fifth grade, holds mock presidential debates. Only shortly before the students step into a voting booth are they told the name of the candidate they had been siding with.

The mock presidential election, which took place last Wednesday, involves grouping the children into small groups of five. Each student then steps into a mock voting booth with a teacher and pulls a lever towards the name of the candidate they support. Teachers count the votes at the end of the day and keep tally on a spreadsheet. This year, there was a clear winner by nearly a 50-vote lead. Moore said the whole staff is a “little nervous” about the results of this year’s mock election, even though Benjamin Franklin Elementary School has a “pretty impressive track record,” as described by NBC News out of New York.

In the electoral equivalent of Punxsutawney Phil*, the babies at Benjamin Franklin Elementary have spoken!!… https://t.co/9aiFBy2XUs

— Madeline Murray? (@madelineDmurray) November 3, 2016

Benjamin Franklin Elementary School isn’t a huge school, with less than 1,000 students, according to stats on SchoolDigger, but this small diverse group of elementary school students have correctly predicted presidential election outcomes for the last seven election cycles. Moore says they are a “good predictor” of who will win the presidential election, leaving out all of the crude and scandalous news that’s tied to each candidate. Students instead focus on the issues and traits that they think will make a good president, along with a focus on the entire election process and their role as voters. Brian Schiller, an 11-year-old student at Benjamin Franklin, said his takeaway from this year’s mock election was that it counts when you vote, and that “everyone deserves to have a chance to vote.”

After all elementary school students get a chance to vote inside the mock voting booths, that are placed inside “election-themed” classrooms, they sit in the auditorium at the end of the day and wait for an announcement of the election results. This year, Benjamin Franklin Elementary School students predicted that the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, will get the popular vote on Tuesday. Hillary Clinton won their mock presidential election with 52 percent (277 votes) over Donald Trump’s, the Republican presidential nominee’s, 43 percent (230 votes). Townhall says that Clinton has also won various other mock elections throughout the nation, but recent polling data, published on the political news website RealClearPolitics, shows a much closer race, with Clinton only having a two-point lead over Trump, as of Sunday morning.

[Featured Image by Alexandru Nika/Shutterstock]