John McCain took last Tuesday’s Republican primary contest, while Democrat Barack Obama nullified rival Hillary Clinton’s double digit polling lead on his way to a 30-point rout in Rutherford — High School that is.

Rutherford High students, most too young to vote in the real thing, participated in a mock primary in their homerooms Tuesday morning, with results announced the following day. When the numbers were in, Senator McCain landed 63 percent of Republican votes, compared to just 14 percent and 12 percent managed by former Governors Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, respectively.

Obama bested Clinton with 67 percent of ballots cast on the Democrat side, and also claimed a pure majority of 53 percent of all votes. The balloting, organized by the school’s political club, stood in stark contrast to the official tallies in Rutherford, where it was Senator Clinton, and not Senator Obama, who carried the delegates with 60-plus percent of the vote.

Young vote

Nevertheless, the Rutherford High School results were consistent with youth voting trends on Super Tuesday. According to CNN exit polls, Senator Obama carried 59 percent of New Jersey voters under 30, compared to Senator Clinton’s 39 percent. Obama won among young voters by similar margins in Hillary Clinton’s home state of New York, despite losing that contest. According to the same exit polls, youth engagement is up across the board, with record turnout in more than 20 of the 24 states that held Super Tuesday primaries.

Vincent Tirri, a Rutherford Social Studies teacher and faculty adviser to the political club, saw the youth trend firsthand. "Obama is definitely the Bobby Kennedy of this generation," said Tirri, referring to the one-time Democratic nominee known for mobilizing young people. "Just like in 1968, I think young people are realizing that the whole tone of the next 30 years could be decided by this election."

Student members of the political club, which holds regular roundtable discussions on issues in global politics ranging from the humanitarian crisis in Darfur to the war in Iraq, agreed. "Aside from a few votes for Batman, students seem to be following [the election] closely," said Dominique DiCristo, a 17-year-old senior who, despite being too young to register, strongly supports Obama.

"Almost all the homeroom teachers I talked to said the students were taking this seriously, discussing who they should vote for," said Tirri.

Allison Schmitt, an 18-year-old senior sporting an Obama sticker, echoed the sentiment, saying "it seems like people just care more this time around." Schmitt, along with fellow political club members and registered voters Pat Saracino and Craig Sheppard, cast their first real votes before convening for pizza to count the mock ballots.

At the pizza party, members tabulated voting totals by grade and homeroom, and put their results into a spreadsheet. Later, they plan to design and administer a poll to identify the factors that most influence voter choice.

Young opinion

Most of the Rutherford students informally surveyed on Tuesday cited Obama’s perceived honesty and distance from the status quo as reasons for support. Jesse Sosnicki, an 18-year-old freshman at Montclair State University and Rutherford resident who was leaning toward Obama on Tuesday morning, sympathized. "Out of all the candidates, he’s the one who seems like he’s telling the truth most of the time."

Among the diehards in the political club, support for Obama went beyond mere conversation. DiCristo and several other members attended an Obama rally in Jersey City prior to the vote, and Schmitt spent time in Ridgewood doing voter outreach.

Nor are young voters unfamiliar with the political maneuvering associated with the primary process. Saracino admitted to casting a "strategic vote" for Obama, whom he favors over Clinton, despite being undecided on a potential vote in November’s general election.

After a decade on the decline in the 1990s, young voter turnout began to rise with the highly contested 2004 general election. According to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, a non-partisan group that studies youth civic involvement, 47 percent of eligible voters under twenty-five cast ballots in the 2004 Presidential election, up from only 37 percent in 2000. If the record youth turnout in the primary—which traditionally sees far fewer voters than the general election—is indicative of that trend, the number is likely to be higher still come November.

"I think it is tough for people our age to relate to a lot of the issues," said Saracino. "Social Security, health care, taxes. But I think people are so dissatisfied with the way things are going that they are starting to have an opinion."

Added Mr. Tirri: "We got better voter turnout than for homecoming king."