Is mock vote a leading indicator of GOP sweep?

Everyone is looking for some kind of clue as to how Tuesday’s elections are going to turn out.

Some are turning to polls and some are turning to tea leaves, but both of those methods are flawed. People love to lie to pollsters, and even if they didn’t, the pollsters love to lie to themselves about their own reliability. As for tea leaves, who knows if the murky mess is accurate except as a picture of the general gloom that everyone feels about the future...

But I’m banking on something much less scientific than polling and something much more trustworthy than tea leaves — the tried-and-true “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” theory of politics.

It’s certainly not surprising that in highly conservative Flathead County, students at both Glacier High School and Flathead High School in Kalispell voted for a straight Republican ticket in mock elections held last week. But what’s really intriguing is that the same results were reported statewide in the program coordinated by the Montana secretary of state’s office.

Remember, although Montana usually votes Republican in presidential races, the state tends to lean Democratic in other statewide races. Thus, we currently have a Democratic governor, attorney general, auditor, secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction, and two U.S. senators. Only Denny Rehberg has bucked the trend as the state’s Republican representative in the U.S. House.

But unless students in Montana are particularly rebellious against their parent’s political values, that trend may be about to come to an end.

For president, Mitt Romney wins in the student election with 5,223 votes to President Obama’s 3,461. That’s a percentage split of about 60-40, which represents a much larger margin than current polling suggests will happen on Tuesday, but polling is based on assumptions, and assumptions can be wrong.

So I am going to make an assumption of my own — namely that 9,500 student voters (about 1,000 voted for neither Romney nor Obama) are a fairly large representative sample of what families are talking about at their dinner tables in Montana. If that many kids are voting for the Republican, it’s a good sign that a lot of the adults will do so too. So I’m predicting that the margin of victory for Romney in Montana will be closer to the 20 percent in the mock election than the 3 to 4 points suggested by the most recent polling. Let’s take into account a margin for error, and say that Montana should land at about 56 percent for Romney and about 43 percent for President Obama, with 1 percent going third party.

One of the big variables in these mock elections is that students are much more willing to try something new, so more than 7 percent voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson, a number that would be impossible for him to gain on Election Day. But if we throw out the third-party vote and just look at the trend lines, it looks like Montana youth is ready for change in a big way. Considering that younger people are, by nature, if anything a bit more liberal than their parents, it must give Montana Republicans some considerable hope when they analyze the numbers.

Clear winners were Steve Daines for U.S. House, Rick Hill for governor, Brad Johnson for secretary of state, Sandy Welch for superintendent of public instruction, Tim Fox for attorney general, and Derek Skees for state auditor.

A winner with a much smaller margin of victory was Rep. Rehberg over incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. Since that race is currently at 49-48 in the polls with a narrow Tester lead, it certainly adds some credibility to the student voters that their vote also suggests the race is “too close to call.”

It should be noted that a nationwide mock student election conducted by One Vote 2012 was won handily by Barack Obama with 50 percent to 44 percent for Romney. But the sampling error in this election was clear. Montana was listed as going to Romney by 75 percent to 24 percent, a margin that is inconceivable. Other obvious discrepancies with reality were seen in such craziness as Romney winning Oregon and Obama winning North and South Dakota, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. ’Taint gonna happen.

But Montana trending Republican just might. I wouldn’t count on either Rehberg or Hill winning their races, but we will know on Tuesday. Should be an interesting night.