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"gewg_" writes:

from the vox-populi dept.

The Bern Report reports [thebernreport.com]

Dr. Rick Hardy and Dr. John Hemingway have been leading Mock Presidential Elections [at Western Illinois University] since 1975. During that time, students who have participated in these mock elections have chosen the winning party with 100% accuracy and have an astonishing record in selecting presidential winners.

On the Democratic side for the Primaries Sanders won [wiumpe.com][1] by close to a 2 to 1 margin over challenger Hillary Clinton.

[...]After nominating Sanders, the student Democrats put him up against Jeb Bush, who received the Republican nomination, with Bernie winning the electoral college by nearly a 4 to 1 margin and a decisive win for the popular vote.

This simulation always takes place the year before the presidential election year, and three months before the actual Iowa caucuses. The genesis of this mock presidential election began at the University of Iowa in 1975 with two political science doctoral students, John Hemingway and Rick Hardy. In that year, students selected Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford--long before anyone really knew of Jimmy Carter.

In the years that followed, Rick Hardy expanded the format and engaged thousands of students at the University of Missouri-Columbia where students registered a perfect record of selecting the subsequent winning presidential party. In 2007 and 2011, Hardy and Hemingway teamed up again to conduct a massive campus-wide simulation at Western Illinois University. In 2007, Western students selected Barack Obama as president at a time when no one thought he could win! And, in 2011, students narrowly re-elected President Obama.

[1] Content is behind scripts.

Original Submission