The students at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Yorktown Heights, New York have been incredibly accurate at correctly predicting the winner of the popular vote presidential election. Since the 1968 election, when the school first opened, students at the k-5th grade school have nailed the popular vote winner in their mock election. The students study the electoral process throughout the year and learn about the candidates (albeit as "Candidate A" and "Candidate B"), and debate their various policies and proposals in their classrooms before the final vote.
This year's winter? Hillary Clinton, who nabbed 52 percent of the vote to Donald Trump's 43 percent. Electoral votes, which were distributed by class population, also went to Clinton.
As for why the school has correctly guessed every election, Principal Patricia Moore thinks that the diversity of her school--which includes children from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and economic classes, is an accurate snapshot of the United States as a whole.
“We’re pretty proud of it,” Benjamin Franklin Elementary School principal Patricia Moore told CBS News. “Every four years we continue it. We can’t skip an election nationwide, so we can’t skip it in our school.”
The school is a melting pot, Moore said, which may have contributed to its accuracy over the years.
“We have minority groups, students that speak English as a second language, white collar, blue collar,” Moore said. “It could be representative of the nation.”
While various other mock elections and even football games are signaling a Clinton win, the stock market and also this monkey in China say it's going to be Trump.
Will the kids at Benjamin Franklin Elementary add another election to their streak? We'll have to wait until Tuesday.
