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Kids pick the prez … in a close one
Drop the balloons. It’s over.
Sen. Barack Obama has won Nickelodeon’s 2008 Kids Pick the President vote — but it was a close call.
Obama received 51 percent of the vote (1,167,087), and Sen. John McCain received 49 percent (1,129,945).
A record-breaking number of votes — more than 2.2 million — were cast in the network’s online poll. Kids voted online from Oct. 12-20.
Nickelodeon has held a kids’-vote every election year since 1988, and kids have correctly predicted the winner in four out of the last five U.S. presidential campaigns.
Linda Ellerbee, host of Nickelodeon’s Nick News, announced the winner on Monday.
“It’s important to take note of who won the ‘Kids’ Vote,’ simply because so many kids vote the way their parents will,” Ellerbee said in a statement after the election. “But what really counts is this: they participated in democracy. They voted. How can this be anything but good?”
This year’s Nickelodeon campaign kicked off in January with the first-ever “Kids’ Primary,” which resulted in kids accurately predicting senators Obama and McCain to win their respective party tickets.
During the next months, Nick News aired four election-themed episodes: “Kids Primary,” “Election Issues,” Tales from the Trail” and “Kids Pick the President.”
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