Peabody middle school students favor Obama

PEABODY – The results are in. Students at Peabody’s Higgins Middle School have declared Barack Obama as the new President of the United States – and by quite the alarming majority.Out of the 1,285 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade voters who turned out to Cullen Library, 947 (73 percent) voted for Obama. Senator John McCain received 26 percent of the votes, or roughly 338 nominations.Seventh-grade teacher Amanda Veiga, who ran this year’s mock election, said she wasn’t at all surprised at who the students chose. She said several teachers took exit polls that showed Obama would be likely to win.”It’s what we expected,” she said. “It was a little closer than we actually thought. We thought it’d be an 80-20 (ratio).”Veiga held a similar mock election for middle school students last February before the primaries. During that time, Senator Hillary Clinton took the top spot with 501 votes, while Obama came in a close second with 484. McCain received a minimal 195 supporters, whereas former Governor Mitt Romney earned only 158.”Things were a little easier this time around,” said Veiga. “It was the same format and it went quite smoothly. The kids did an amazing job.”