WASHINGTON: The youngsters of the United States have voted, the results are in -- and it's a landslide victory for Barack Obama.
Sixty-five percent picked the incumbent president, and 35 percent his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, in a bellwether online poll conducted by children's current affairs show "Nick News with Linda Ellerbee."
The outcome, released Monday, will raise eyebrows because, for five out of the six previous US presidential elections, the viewers of "Nick News" have correctly picked the winner several weeks before the actual vote.
In grown-up surveys, Obama and Romney have been running neck and neck.
"Obama won big," said "Nick News" anchor Ellerbee, who doubted that Romney's failure to join Obama in a "Nick News" election special a week ago on the Nickelodean cable channel might have swayed the outcome.
"In 2004, when John Kerry refused to participate in the show, the kids still elected Kerry," who went on to suffer defeat at the hands of George W. Bush, she told AFP.
More than 521,000 votes were cast over the past week, Ellerbee said, a significant reduction in turnout "because Nickelodeon fixed it this time so you couldn't vote more than once."
And while there was no way to guarantee that everyone who voted was under the legal voting age of 18, "it's safe to say the majority are kids," based on anecdotal evidence from previous years, she said.
Launched 21 years ago, "Nick News" is the longest-running children's news program in television history.
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