On October 30, The Roundup’s editorial staff conducted opinion polling on the student body’s preferences for presidential candidates, Texan senators, and, of course, Halloween candy. The results are now in, and the votes all tallied, so let’s take a look.
As a note, not all values will add to 100 due to rounding.
Presidential Polling
Here, students were given 4 choices: Donald Trump as the Republican, Harris as the Democrat, Chase Oliver as the Libertarian, and Jill Stein as the Green.
Winning the approval of Jesuit’s student body with a comfortable 76.9% of votes, Donald Trump’s 197 of 256 ballots shows the solidly red tendencies of our polling sample.
Even so, Kamala Harris secured 50 ballots during the faux election, 19.5% of the total presidential vote, illustrating a very much present blue section in Jesuit’s studentry.
Let us not forget the third parties, though. The Libertarian Party under Chase Oliver snagged 5 ballots, and Jill Stein’s Green Party earned 4. They came away with 1.9% and 1.5% respectively.
As for write-ins, we didn’t give an option for that because we’re boring and hate fun. But that didn’t stop some from casting a handful of gems. I won’t name those written in, but various rappers tended to have a strong base of support in this category. I would like to emphasize that we discourage write-ins, though. We’ve got like 260 ballots to get through.
Senatorial Polling
In this part of the ballot, the voters were given a binary choice: Ted Cruz as the Republican or Colin Allred as the Democrat. Our student body came out a little more divided on this election, with Allred putting up more of a fight than did Harris.
Ted Cruz picked up 72.4% of the vote, securing 197 of 258 ballots. Again, a strong red tendency among our sample is noted. Almost all of Cruz’s support was among those who voted Republican down the ballot.
Colin Allred got 27.5% here, with 71 of 258 votes. What many on the editorial staff found fascinating during the ballot counting was the number of people who answered “Trump” for president and “Allred” for senator. Exact data wasn’t taken, but low double-digit numbers of these were noted. Perhaps some are unhappy with Senator Cruz’s record specifically, but content with Trump being president.
Halloween Candy
Now for the fun stuff. Everyone likes Halloween, right? Here we asked students for their preference among 3 candies: M&Ms, Twix, or Skittles. This race was tight, and was the only one that really mattered.
Twix took home the win, with 95 of 258 votes going to the caramel-filled treat. This was a plurality of 36.8%. No data is available on the split between left and right Twix, but it is thought to be a hotly-contested issue.
In second place was M&Ms, securing 88 of 258 ballots, a percentage of 34.1. That state-of-the-art candy shell just wasn’t enough to get it over the finish line.
3rd place was occupied by Skittles, with 75 votes of 258. That comes out to 29% of ballots. If only they’d been sour.
Conclusions
Even though this was just a faux election conducted in a school with a highly slanted student body, this was a lot of fun to organize, and I hope it will get some of the participants out to vote when they are of age. It was fascinating to quantify just what percentage of the school leaned which way, and to see some complexity in ballots. And, as always, I’ll leave off with the message that we should all be civil this election season. Most all of us love America, just in different ways.
Tune into The Roundup for more political coverage!
