Unofficial voting

Today, I decided to take an unofficial vote in two of my classes. The first was a class of 17 seniors; the second was a class of 12 sophomores. They only had two candidates to vote for: McCain or Obama. Here are the results as well as comments as we discussed why they voted how they did:

Obama: 28

McCain: 1

One sophomore voted for McCain because: "I always vote for the underdog."

Reasons given for others voting for Obama:

"I heard his name more than McCain's."

"I like Obama's first name: Barack, because it means "peach" in Hungarian!"

"I couldn't spell McCain's name."

"I don't really know what either of them stands for, but I heard Obama's name more."

"McCain is too old."

"Obama is a black man and I want to see a black man as President of the U.S." (4 students said this.)

"Obama is against the war in Iraq."

"Obama is younger."

When I asked if they knew what platforms each of the candidates had on various issues, none of the 29 students knew anything, except that Obama is against war."