11/3/2008
If it's true parents often impress their political views on their children, Illinois voters will paint their towns blue in a landslide win for Barack Obama next week.
However, if the path to a voter's heart is through the stomach, or reflected by their unmentionables, John McCain may make Illinois a closer state than most experts think.
Mock elections hosted by three major organizations (National Student/Parent Mock Election, ChannelOne and the National Youth Initiative) at schools throughout the country show Obama is the clear youth favorite. That includes a margin as wide as 79 percent to 21 percent in Chicago itself, according to the ChannelOne poll.
Even in Republican strongholds students showed a decided preference for Barack Obama. DuPage County, for instance, didn't have a single public school choose McCain in any of the mock election results. With results from 24 schools in 10 DuPage communities, the tally on Friday afternoon was Obama 12,956, McCain 5,000. That's a definitive margin of 72 percent of DuPage students in favor of Obama compared to 28 percent for McCain.
Phyllis Kidd teaches at Wheaton North High School, where students warned her Obama would easily win the mock election.
"I thought it was interesting that in DuPage County that there would be that much of an assumption for Obama," Kidd said. "DuPage is generally a Republican area, and if you count yard signs today it probably still is. In the past we just assumed that kids echoed what their parents were saying. We won't know if that's the case until next week. It's going to be very interesting to compare the results of the mock election to the real election."
Indeed, only one DuPage school in the reported results chose McCain. Immanuel Lutheran School in Elmhurst voted 16 to 9 in favor of McCain. While the vote total was small, it reflected of the overall trend of Christian schools favoring McCain.
The only public school in the area to choose McCain did so in a nailbiter. McCain edged Obama by only three votes, 472 to 469, at Thompson Middle School in St. Charles. Thompson school officials weren't available to explain the results, but ChannelOne exit polling showed the top factors driving student votes were the economy, war in Iraq, education and the environment.
McCain also won or made it close in many retail-based contests. For instance, Colonial Cafe has ice cream shops in seven locations including Elgin, Naperville and Algonquin. They created Ba-racky Road and McCandy Cain sundaes to poll voters, though customers get a ballot no matter what they order.
"We had people eating their particular presidential candidate sundae even though they may not like the flavoring just because they felt guilty eating anything else," said Director of Operations Clinton Anderson.
A seesaw battle had Obama winning for much of the poll, including a 58 percent lead at one point. But McCain nabbed his own 58 percent lead last week. Anderson said his polls usually lean Republican, but votes trended for Obama longer than he expected.
In Libertyville, the presidential race has torn voters walking down Milwaukee Avenue. That's the scene of a partisan showdown between the Marked For Dessert bakery and the Adrienne Clarisse Intimate Boutique. The bakery has special Obama and McCain cookies in the form of donkeys and elephants. It's part of a larger poll hosted by the Retail Bakery Association. There are five bakeries in Illinois tracking cookie ballots, including the Deerfield Bakery in Buffalo Grove and the Piece-A-Cake bakery in East Dundee. All the Illinois bakeries have McCain making it a much tighter race than the school elections. Donkeys are still proving tastier at Marked For Dessert, but the lingerie store across the street has a decidedly different outcome.
Adrienne Clarisse is selling white T-shirts and panties with Republican or Democrat spelled out in crystals on them. Republican garments have outsold Democrat items by 3 to 1. Clarisse said there is no bipartisanship in underwear purchases.
"It's always either all Republican or all Democrat," she said. "It's interesting to see the Democrat cookies outselling the Republican cookies across the street, but it's completely the opposite here. I guess Democrats like to eat and the Republicans like to, well, fill in the blank."
Mock the Vote
Mock election results from local schools by county show Obama is the clear favorite of students.
Northwest Cook: Obama 75.2%; McCain 24.8%*
DuPage: Obama 72.2%; McCain 27.8%**
Kane: Obama 69%; McCain 31%***
Lake: Obama 68%; McCain 32%****
McHenry: 71.8%; McCain 28.2%*****
*6,925 total votes, 12 schools
**17,956 total votes, 24 schools
***6,057 total votes, 10 schools
****1,921 total votes, 5 schools
*****543 total votes, 2 schools
Source: Illinois League of Women Voters
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