By James Nichols-Worley ’23
It’s that most wonderful time of the year again– no, not Hanukkah– November. On Tuesday night after Halloween, the world stopped. Then, five days later, we found out who won America’s favorite quadrennial contest.
Mr. Lyons and his Advanced Government class ran their mock election at St. Mark’s but luckily one with far less weight. We spoke with Mr. Lyons about his work and thoughts on this year’s mock election results.
What was the process of choosing the different questions on the ballot?
The ballot that went out is the same ballot largely that went out last winter. Obviously at that point it was a primary with the 20 Democratic nominees. They are largely the same repeated questions as when they were created in 2016.
It’s not just what the St. Mark’s community is interested in, but what has national correlations. We carried them forward because we want to see change over time, like with marijuana legalization from 2016 to 2020.
Every year though, we add in some questions. Like about mail-in voting, because that wasn’t an issue in 2016. The ones at the end are the more hot button questions.
Do you think anything’s changed about St. Mark’s since our mock primary in the spring?I haven’t sat down with the data, there’s so many ways you can slice it. Do the faculty feel differently about the carbon tax? Do third form girls feel differently about the wealth tax? The short answer is, I haven’t had time.
What we had with the newsletter was, the [advanced gov] class sat down and asked questions about the data. How do we fit with gun control, how do we sit with America?
Were there any surprising results, or any surprising correlations?
A lot of them were what you expect, St. Mark’s is pretty liberal. The overwhelming vote for Biden wasn’t surprising.
I was personally surprised there wasn’t broader acceptance for outlawing handguns. Maybe it was the word “outlaw” that scared people. Most people killed by guns are with handguns, even if AK-47s look scary, which is why we used that wording.
Students don’t feel strongly about lowering the drinking age. When I was growing up, they raised the drinking age. It's not just because they want to have a beer. If I can join the army, get married, vote, how come I can make those decisions but not have a beer?
A similar percentage of the school voted for independent candidates as did in the real election. Is this coincidence or something prescient about the school’s political makeup?
I think that unlike 2016, there were very few people who didn’t feel strongly about Trump. You either strongly embraced Trump or strongly rejected him, which made it very hard for 3rd party candidates. They might have been willing to vote for the Green Party in 2016, but they decided to vote against Trump for the person who has a chance.
Over half the school identifies as somewhat or very liberal, and less than ¼ identify as somewhat or very conservative. Do we do enough to encourage more diverse political discussion, or is it not a problem?
If you’re asking my personal opinion, one of the reasons we value diversity in education is because we want to learn from people who think differently than us. I want to have political speakers, I like [discussions about] government.
We should have opportunities to hear people who disagree with us. If the school has a groupthink, you know where everyone thinks the same so nobody can speak out against the majority, we should be able to hear more from the minority ideology, both inside and outside the school.
We don’t have a Republicans club, even though we have a Democrats club. I think we need to hear these opinions even if a lot of people disagree with them. I would want to.
Were there any instances of people voting who didn’t go to St. Mark’s, or people who voted more than once?
No, not that we can tell. People could have cheated, but did they? Probably not. Just because there’s a possibility something could have happened, it doesn’t mean it did. We definitely haven’t seen any evidence of it.
Mr. Jewell, the head of the St. Mark’s History and Social Sciences Department, commented on the mock election, “Well done. Isn’t it a great thing to track election results?”
While not all of the data from the mock election has been released (and probably will not be released publicly for privacy reasons, although the survey was anonymous), the St. Marker received exclusive data about the last thing you’d expect: the drinking age.
Out of all the faculty who had an opinion on lowering the drinking age, about ¾ (74%) were against lowering it.
The student body, however, was more broadly split. Just over half all students who expressed an opinion opposed lowering the drinking age. Yet, a much different story appears when analyzing the data form by form. The youngest grade, the 3rd form, opposed lowering the drinking age in similar percentages as the faculty. Yet the oldest grade, the 6th form (many of whom are 18 or are turning 18), supported in the majority (55%) lowering the drinking age to 18. In the mock election’s newsletter, it was noted that over 80% of Americans oppose lowering the drinking age.
If, by any chance (or by magic), the drinking age is lowered, would the school return to letting students drink on campus? Fat chance of that, but it does sound like a great plan for the seniors.
So now, what does the future hold for St. Mark’s? Perhaps with Joe Biden’s victory in the actual U.S. election, political tensions can now cool down, at least at St. Mark’s, and we’ll be able to more openly debate our different beliefs. After the election, we likely won’t see as many spreadsheets and pie charts as we did during the election, but we certainly should continue to explore and discuss political thoughts and critical issues that shape America.