Results

Students in New Jersey, ranging from grades 4 to 12, voted primarily via electronic ballots. Students submitted votes for the primary candidates based on their selected party as well as two issue questions: whether New Jersey should have Daylight Saving Time all year round and if New Jersey law should require that the school day start no earlier than 8:30am. 4-5th grade student votes were only for the issue questions.

Students either submitted their ballots individually online or a representative from each participating school or school district collected the voting results and submitted them via an online form. In total, schools within all of the Congressional Districts participated, with a grand total of about 35,000 students casting votes. Students that voted online were able to participate in a “ranked choice” voting method. After selecting their party, students would rank the candidates of that party. In the charts, we show the voting distribution of each candidate by round. Every new round, a candidate is dropped and those ballots are reallocated until a candidate receives majority of the vote. More information on how ranked voting works can be viewed under Current Issues.

For the Republican party, Donald Trump achieved a majority in the first round, so there is no chart breaking down the results by round. And while delegates are not distributed according to Congressional Districts, there are also maps displaying the results of the first round of voting by Congressional District. Results of the two current issue questions are displayed in charts by grade sections.

More detailed results, including breakdown by grades is available in the PDF download.

Download the Results Report (PDF)

These results are a limited sample of student views, representing only those schools and classes that chose to vote in the mock election.

Final Results

Below are three charts. The first is showing the Democratic results for each round of the ranked choice voting. Donald Trump had a majority in the first round, so results are only displayed for the Democratic party. The other two charts are showing the breakdown of votes received in the initial round of voting.

Democratic Primaries Map

Here is a visual for the initial round of voting. The yellow buttons can be clicked on to see total percentages for the candidates.

Republican Primaries Map

Here is a visual for the initial round of voting. The yellow buttons can be clicked on to see total percentages for the candidates.

The Current Issues

We asked the students two current issue questions: 1) Should New Jersey law require that the school day start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.? 2) Should we eliminate the time change in the fall, making it Daylight Saving Time all 12 months of the year? Below are charts showing results by grade section for each question.