In the News: Children Voting

Craig's presentation today looks at the mock elections held in middle and elementary schools. The author seems to think it is significant that children have been consistently correct in choosing the winning candidate "(except for two elections, one of which was the JFK/Nixon election in which students voted before the televised debate; it's likely that the student vote did represent the views before this debate). My question is: why would anyone think that these votes wouldn't be accurate? Children are likely voting for who their parents will vote for, so getting children's votes is basically the same as getting their parents' votes. Granted, there will be some families where the vote is split, but these seem significant statistically.