The results are in from a nationwide vote – not the official one, mind you, but a nationwide vote for students.
Student Vote, a nationwide ballot for K-12 students operating in each province, released results for simulated student elections in schools across Canada. The results weren’t far off the final counts Oct. 21, with the overall win going to Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada.
In the simulated vote, which included an in-depth education on politics, voting and recruiting students to be poll clerks, returning officers and do other election-related duties, the Liberal Party would have received a minority government. The total number of seats, however, were much different than real life. The Liberals only received 110 seats, a far cry from the 156 they got on election night. By contrast, the students voted in the NDP as official opposition, giving them 99 seats – almost four times as many as the 25 seats they actually won.
Across northern Manitoba, students voted overwhelmingly for NDP candidate and eventual winner Niki Ashton. Throughout all northern schools and more than 1,500 student voters, Ashton claimed more than half of the ballot, receiving 788 votes in total.
Students cast ballots at all four Flin Flon School Division facilities as part of the exercise. Ashton received a clean sweep of all Flin Flon-area education facilities. The largest ballot in Flin Flon took place at École McIsaac School, where 222 kids hit the ballot box. Ashton won handily, receiving 104 votes, while Liberal candidate Judy Klassen got 39 votes in second place.
One hundred and forty-seven Hapnot Collegiate students cast ballots. More than half of the kids voted for Ashton, who received 78 votes. Second place went to Green Party candidate Ralph McLean, the recipient of 31 ballots.
Many Faces Education Centre only saw 20 people vote, but Ashton received 11 votes. McLean ended up second with six. Ruth Betts Community School also went to Ashton, who beat Klassen 13 votes to four.
Frontier Collegiate and Cranberry Portage Elementary both went to Ashton, with 80 votes from Frontier and another 15 from the younger students. Snow Lake’s Joseph H. Kerr School also voted Ashton with eight of a total of 13 votes.
Across the border in Saskatchewan, the riding of Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River went, as the real election did, to Conservative candidate Gary Vidal. He received 697 of 1,730 votes, just enough to squeak out a significant lead over NDP incumbent Georgina Jolibois’ 424 votes.
While Vidal may have won the day with both the kids and the grown-ups, Creighton Community School was not won over. CCS students picked Tammy Cook-Searson, the Liberal candidate, eight votes to six for all other combined candidates.
