That Barack Obama Feeling

This morning, I took my class to the closest public school and we did some exit polling. I explained to the kids to be polite no matter who the person had voted for and to understand that many people would decline to participate.

My class has been incredibly excited the past month about this day. We've looked at five of the major issues in small groups, charted policies, watched speeches, written opinions about the issues, posted the winning candidate's faces on the class map,etc., etc. In fact, they have been so excited about this day that when I told them 10 days ago that I was going to possibly miss most of the week of 2/4 for jury duty (settled before trial yesterday), many of them cried out, "What? You're going to miss Super Tuesday?"

So when I surprised them this morning with the exit polling idea, they all were pretty happy. Beth and SHR met us for the event and it was up the block we went.

It was pretty funny watching them in action. They didn't quite get the idea of only asking each person once. Some people were asked by 2 or 3 students on their way in and way out. In fact, I'm pretty sure that some people had their vote count five times or so. So our final figures are a bit skewed. Still, there was a steady stream of voters for the 35 minutes or so while we were there. But my guess is that instead of the close to 700 votes listed here, it was probably closer to half of that number.

The numbers:
Obama - 430
Clinton - 215
McCain - 13
Bloomberg - 9
Edwards - 7
Romney - 6
Huckabee - 5
Kerry - 1

The young pollsters prepare to grill a well known actor.
For November, I think I want to do the same thing in the neighborhood then get on the subway and head to a more predominantly Republican neighborhood to conduct another poll.