On Tuesday, Feb. 23, Malden High School’s AP Government teachers, Greg Hurley and Rick Tivnan, ran a mock primary election for students to vote in. The election ran through all periods of the day in the library and auditorium with official ballots, private voting booths, and an electronic counting machine. A week from Tuesday, on Mar. 1, Massachusetts’ primary election will take place as part of the nationwide “Super Tuesday,” the day many states in the country hold their primary elections.
Back in October, the government teachers and students ran their first mock election of the year for Malden’s Mayor, Councillors-At-Large, and non-binding ballot questions. There was a large turnout then, but it was not nearly as successful as this week’s primary election. Read more about October’s local government mock election at MHS here.
The following day, the results were in! Mayor Gary Christenson was one of the first to break the news over Twitter:
BREAKING NEWS: Sanders and Trump come out on top in Malden High School Mock Presidential Primary Election! #civics
— Mayor Christenson (@MayorOfMalden) February 24, 2016
As Christenson said, the winners of the mock election were Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side, with 645 votes, and Donald Trump on the Republican, with 88 votes.
Hillary Clinton followed Sanders with 226 votes, and then Martin O’Malley, who has suspended his campaign, with 23 votes. For the Republican Party, Ted Cruz received 32 votes, Marco Rubio 27 votes, and Ben Carson 16 votes.
Candidates who suspended their campaigns include Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, and Chris Christie. Collectively they received 28 votes, ranging anywhere between 2 and 14 votes individually. Fourteen students voted “no preference.”
This election was held at the perfect time: only a week away from Super Tuesday. Will MHS’s results be a reflection of the people’s? Massachusetts historically tends to be a more liberal leaning state. FiveThirtyEight has predicted that Hillary Clinton has “an 82% chance of winning the Massachusetts primary” by statistically analyzing the polls (FiveThirtyEight). The Republican winner has not been officially predicted yet, but the likelihood of Trump winning is high after his streak of wins across the country. But with that being said, anything is possible, and the people will have to wait until the winners are calculated and announced for Massachusetts on Tuesday night.
