Donald Trump was the children’s choice for U.S. president Tuesday as students in more than 300 Iowa high schools cast some 57,000 votes in the Youth Straw Poll, a learning activity led by Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate as a follow up to the Youth Presidential Straw Poll conducted in January.
The Trump-Pence Republican ticket took 46 percent of the ballots cast statewide, with the Clinton-Kaine ticket garnering 36 percent. Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson and vice-presidential candidate Bill Weld earned 7 percent of the votes, and the remainder were shared among seven other parties.
Votes were also tallied for Iowa’s U.S. Senate and U.S. House races. Incumbents were widely favored by the young people, beginning with six-term Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, who took 62 percent of the students’ votes, compared to 25 percent for his Democrat opponent, Patty Judge.
In the races for the U.S. House of Representatives, students chose Republican incumbent Rod Blum over Democrat Monica Vernon by a 60 percent to 40 percent margin in the first congressional district contest. In the second district race, Democrat incumbent Dave Loebsack and Republican challenger Christopher Peters each captured 50 percent of the votes. The exact count was 3,234 votes for Loebsack and 3,230 for Peters.
Republican incumbent David Young took 56 percent of the votes in the third congressional district. Democrat Jim Mowrer garnered 31 percent. Fourth district Republican incumbent Steve King easily outdistanced his Democrat challenger Kim Weaver, taking 75 percent of the votes to Weaver’s 24 percent.
“This was a great, hands-on learning experience for thousands of Iowa students,” Pate said Tuesday. “We want to engage Iowa’s youth in civics and get them excited about the political process. Hopefully, this will help inspire them to become active in their community and develop a passion for the electoral process and how we choose our representative form of government.”
The Iowa Youth Straw Poll is part of the Elections 101 curriculum developed by Pate for high school students. The free materials are available at Elections101.org and are a continuation of the very successful Caucus 101 curriculum developed by Pate in 2015.
The Iowa Youth Straw Poll and the Elections 101 curriculum had the support of the Iowa Council for the Social Studies and the Iowa Department of Education.
A live video stream from Pate’s office at the Iowa State Capitol included student guests and teachers from various schools, including Urbandale High School, Dallas Center-Grimes High School, McCombs Middle School in Des Moines, Lincoln High School, West Central Valley Middle School in Redfield, Aplington-Parkersburg Middle School, Waukee Timberline School, Dowling Catholic High School and Davis County Middle School.
Students and teachers were encouraged to use the use the #IAparticipate hashtag on social media when posting about the Youth Straw Poll. Several of the student visitors participating in the Facebook Live stream were selected because they made posts about the Youth Straw Poll using #IAparticipate.
A full list of the schools that participated in the Iowa Youth Straw Poll is available online. All grades were welcome to participate.
