Despite the fact that her opponent actually looks and acts like a cartoon character, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has won Nickelodeon’s Kids Pick The President mock election. According to Entertainment Weekly, 905,928 kids cast their ballot in the online poll, with 53 percent going to Clinton, 31 percent going to Donald Trump, and 11 percent going to Gary Johnson—possibly because kids were under the impression that “Johnson” is the last name of SpongeBob’s pet snail.
The Kids Pick The President website doesn’t specifically say which issues swayed these kid voters, but we imagine Clinton’s decades of experience and her strong support for better education and health care reform were contributing factors. Also, kids probably responded negatively to Donald Trump’s disapproval of ethnically diverse Power Rangers teams, as well as his casual disregard for Dora The Explorer.
Interestingly, while this may seem like a fun scheme to get kids interested in politics (or at least an extremely sanitized and de-fanged version of politics), the results of the Kids Pick The President poll has correctly predicted six of the last seven presidential elections. The one outlier was 2004, when kids chose John Kerry over George W. Bush—and though that may not have been the “correct” result, it was probably still the right one.
Basically, what this all means is that kids have a better grasp on the issues than you might think, so maybe we should just abolish the dumb age restriction that prevents young people from voting. The national budget might have to allocate more funds for Paw Patrol toys, but that’s better than building a giant wall.