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Moody, Along With Incumbents, Wins Maine Student Mock Election

Over 11,000 students from nearly 100 Maine schools participated in this year’s student mock election.

Shawn Moody, Angus King, Chellie Pingree and Bruce Poliquin were the winners of the mock election, which has a pretty good track record for predicting winners.

“The people that watch this process most closely are the actual candidates and campaigns themselves because this does tend to be something of a predictor of the outcome of the election,” says Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap.

Since 2008, the students have picked the winners for Governor, Senator and Congress correctly, except in two races. That year, they chose Republican Charlie Summers over Democrat Chellie Pingree in the First Congressional District and in 2014 they chose Democrat Emily Cain over Republican Bruce Poliquin in the Second District. Dunlap says campaigns track the student election closely and have been known to change their strategies in response to the student vote results.

“Sometimes the students will go in a completely different direction than the adults,” he says. “I actually have seen campaigns sort of adjust their strategy in the last few weeks based on what they saw at the mock election.”

Journalist Mal Leary spearheads Maine Public's news coverage of politics and government and is based at the State House.