I found this interesting:

Weekly Reader kids select Bush in Presidential Poll

Cameron Mouton, 6, casts his vote for president on an electronic voting screen at the Brooker Elementary School in Palm Harbour, Florida. The kindergarten student participated in Weekly Reader's presidential poll using a touch-screen voting machine – one of the only schools in the nation to do so.
Photo credit: Mia Toschi/Weekly Reader
 
The students who read Weekly Reader s magazines have made their preference for President known: they want to send President Bush back to the White House.

The results of this year s Weekly Reader poll have just been announced, and the winner is President Bush. Hundreds of thousands of students participated, giving the Republican President more than 60% of the votes cast and making him a decisive choice over Democratic Senator John Kerry.

Since 1956, Weekly Reader students in grades 1-12 have correctly picked the president, making the Weekly Reader poll one of the most accurate predictors of presidential outcomes in history.

President Bush was a strong winner in the student poll; the only state Senator Kerry won was Maryland. Senator Kerry was also in a statistical dead heat with President Bush in New York, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C. and Vermont. President Bush won all but one of the grades, although Senator Kerry did win among tenth-graders.

This year students caught election fever, with an increase of more than 20% in the number of students participating in the Weekly Reader poll than in any prior year. While there were participants from grades K through 12, third- and fourth-graders were the most enthusiastic voters. More than 57,000 students from each of those two grades voted.

The presidential poll, in which teachers collected their students votes and forwarded them to an independent polling company to be tabulated, is part of Weekly Reader s Promote the Vote program, created to teach students about the election process, the issues, the candidates, and how democracy works.

This program teaches students that voting is a privilege and a responsibility, said Emily Swenson, President of Weekly Reader. Through this authentic experience, we are hoping students will become advocates and lifelong voters. And even though the election may be over in eight days, the learning will continue.

Full story: http://www.weeklyreader.com/election_vote.asp

Also:

In the poll, conducted by Scholastic, the global children's publishing and media company, more than half a million students in first through eighth grades from across the U.S. participated. They voted online and through mail-in paper ballots found in many of Scholastic's classroom magazines.

"George W. Bush won the kids' election poll with 52 percent of the vote," announced Scholastic student reporter David Rush.

Kerry collected 47 percent, with one percent going for other candidates.

Scholastic has been conducting similar polls since 1940, with predictions only wrong in two close elections: 1948 when students chose Thomas Dewey over Harry Truman, and 1960, predicting Richard Nixon would beat John Kennedy.

Now, ain't that a self-selecting sample?  Children of "Weekly Reader" readers... OK, so if you want to swap statistics, read this one:

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/US_Elections/0,,2-10-1665_1608442,00.html

...with a sample size of >400,000, which if I'm right that makes it the biggest single poll taken this election (ignoring on-line polls that don't prevent people from voting multiple times, of course)... Again, still in part a self-selecting sample as it is made up of only those children who get the Nickelodeon cable channel (don't know how many that would be in total, though).

Now, ain't that a self-selecting sample?  Children of "Weekly Reader" readers... OK, so if you want to swap statistics, read this one:

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/US_Elections/0,,2-10-1665_1608442,00.html

...with a sample size of >400,000, which if I'm right that makes it the biggest single poll taken this election (ignoring on-line polls that don't prevent people from voting multiple times, of course)... Again, still in part a self-selecting sample as it is made up of only those children who get the Nickelodeon cable channel (don't know how many that would be in total, though).


I choose two different ones, plus I never saw the Nickeloden one.  The Weekly Reader has 400,000 kids and the Scholastic one has over 500,000 (which you did not read since you said the 400,000 from Nickelodeon was the biggest sample,) which cancels that out pretty easily.

So the kids at the weekly READER and at SCHOLASTIC choose Bush, and the kids at NICKELODEON choose Kerry?  So the kids who read more choose Bush, while the kids who watch television choose Kerry?  I can believe that.

And I may be wrong, but I think Nickelodeon was an online poll, conducted on Nick's website.

The Weekly Reader has 400,000 kids and the Scholastic one has over 500,000 (which you did not read since you said the 400,000 from Nickelodeon was the biggest sample,) which cancels that out pretty easily.
Oops, I missed your figure in the Scholastic one - don't you find it interesting that the "real" polls are using sample sizes <10,000.. but the children's one are all comparatively huge?


So the kids at the weekly READER and at SCHOLASTIC choose Bush, and the kids at NICKELODEON choose Kerry?  So the kids who read more choose Bush, while the kids who watch television choose Kerry?  I can believe that.

:-)


And I may be wrong, but I think Nickelodeon was an online poll, conducted on Nick's website.

I got the impression from the first article I read (which I couldn't spot - the link I posted was googled this morning) that like the Scholastic poll it was a combination of phone-in, on-line and (I'm not sure if I got this bit right) cabled straight from the TV... does your cable connection allow you to do that?

I wonder which of them will be saying this next time around:
Since 1956, Weekly Reader students in grades 1-12 have correctly picked the president, making the Weekly Reader poll one of the most accurate predictors of presidential outcomes in history.
...
Children have always picked the winner since the popular channel aimed at kids began conducted the poll in 1988. In 2000, they backed Bush with 55%.

What do you want to bet that in four years' time, they're both claiming a 100% record still?

My kids also took these polls and you know what their reasons for voting for Bush were? My 9 y.o. said he likes the name because he also likes the band "Bush" and my 6 y.o. said
"Because that's who we were talking about". I love my kids to death, but they lack the reasoning to make an informed choice.

Better reasons than most, methinks ;)

Better reasons than most, methinks ;)


Don't underestimate the kid polls.  Read the paper and most of the people in this country don't appear to be older than 10 anyways.  I'm sure most of the people who end up voting, either vote strictly party line or by whatever name they saw in the paper the morning before.