Three quarters of a million students took part in a mock election: Interesting results

By Staff

September 23^rd, 2021

BURLINGTON, ON

Memo to Directors of Education across the country. Young people do care about who gets elected to office.

Letting students get a sense of what is involved in an election is an important first step.

Some 700,000 students took part in a mock parliament.  According to the results of a mock election, elementary, intermediate and secondary school students, the Liberals edged the other parties to win a minority government just as it did in Monday’s federal election.

However, in the students’ vote, New Democrat Party Leader Jagmeet Singh formed the largest opposition party, winning 107 of the 338 seats in Parliament to the Liberals’ 117 seats, said Student Vote Canada, a hands-on program for students to learn about the voting process.

The NDP also garnered 29 per cent of the popular vote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 24 per cent for the Liberals, according to the fantasy election.

The 740,515 student voters came from more than 5,478 schools across Canada and votes were cast in all 338 federal ridings. The mock election came after the students researched the parties and platforms, and debated hot issues raised on the campaign trail.

During Canada’s 44th general election campaign all parties tried hard to engage with voters, especially the younger generation, though social media pandemic-related public health concerns hindered in-person door knocking.

The new internet platform TikTok became an important venue for engaging with Gen Z voters, and Singh was the only party leader with a TikTok account, which gave the NDP a clear advantage in translating Gen Z followers into young voters by engaging them on their preferred platform.

Students were expected to research and try to understand the different party policies.

It was no wonder that polling showed Singh having a higher positive impression rate among young voters, according to Sara Bourdeau, director of operations for the StrategyCorp Institute of Public Policy and Economy.

Most of this story was taken from an article in the Toronto Star of September 22^nd, 2021.