Who needs political scientists, when you have elementary school students? The presidential election has already been decided by one group of voters.
"All of the schools in Janesville , the public and the parochial elementary students, got a chance to vote for who they would vote for, for president," explained Kennedy School fourth grade teacher and news anchor for the event, Allison Pennycook.
Pennycook studied the school district's mock elections in 2000 and 2004 to predict how each school would vote. Obama won Tuesday's vote, 3,761 to 1,348 for John McCain, with 480 electoral votes to McCain's 58. The district also had one vote for Ron Paul and one vote for Ralph Nader.
"I had made predictions beforehand, and there were several schools that I had predicted would be in favor of John McCain," said Pennycook. "They were not. I expected Barack Obama to win, but I did not expect him to win by this much." Pennycook doesn't think the national election will be this much of a landslide — but in the past national results have been similar to the school district's.