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Campus mock election reflects Kansas vote
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on Thursday, November 06, 2008 (CST)
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By Emily Langness, editor
 Friends University called it. The Kansas vote, anyway.
While Barack Obama won the presidential election Tuesday, John McCain won the Kansas vote and by a similar ratio to Friends University’s mock election held three weeks ago by the History/Political Science Club.
Of the 477 votes cast in the mock election, 50 percent went to McCain and 48 percent went to Obama, a narrower margin than Kansas’ 57-41 percents reported on the New York Times’ Web site.
The Republican/Democrat margin at the club’s mock election four years ago was also much wider, with 62 percent voting for George W. Bush and 36 percent for John Kerry.
This year’s mock election was better attended than four years ago, said Guang Qiu Xu, history professor at Friends and adviser for the History/Political Science Club.
“I think more people believe they are making history at this election,” he said.
In addition to voting for the oldest first-term presidential candidate in history, Republicans were voting for the first female vice president and Democrats were voting for the first African-American to be elected president, said Xu.
“Students were taking this election more seriously,” said junior Holly Pilcher, History/Political Science Club president.
Last election, the club received only 327 ballots compared to this year’s 477, and the number of registered voters was lower, though only by 7 percent.
“The fact that he (Obama) is the president-elect shows that the nation is changing, and it’s good to see growth,” Pilcher said.
Some of the changes Xu sees in America’s Obama-led future deal with both foreign and domestic policies.
Obama hopes to end the war in Iraq and send more troops to Afghanistan.
At home, he hopes to provide more for the middle class to boost the economy.
The president will also have to prove himself to the rest of the world, said Xu, who has been to 40 countries and lived in China for 30 years.
“I look at policies and candidates from a more international perspective,” said Xu.
He said that when he goes to other countries, people joke that they should be allowed to vote for the American president because he has so much influence on global affairs.
For information on how you can learn about America’s global image, click here.
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