The Election Watched around the World

            President Barack Obama led the Democrats to victory on Tuesday over challenger Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. The election results were announced at about 10:20 on Tuesday night with the president being declared the winner, and it was the call heard around the world as people from all over the world celebrated the news of four more years. The president officially won with an Electoral College count of 303 to Romney’s 206, and a popular vote of 60, 840,934 to 57,940,881.

Minnesota voted Democrat for the tenth consecutive election, along with neighboring states of Wisconsin and Iowa, while North and South Dakota voted Republican. In a more general breakdown most of the South and Midwest voted Republican while most of the Northeast and West coast voted Democrat, a common pattern these days.

            Here at North the majority of students (though most couldn’t vote) favored Obama to win the election while a smaller minority favored Romney. Mr. Hagel’s Political Science and AP U.S. Government classes voted on the issue and the polls came back with 91 votes for Obama and 35 for Mitt Romney, similarly the majority of votes were against the marriage amendment, against the voter ID amendment and for Senator Amy Klobuchar’s reelection.

            Mr. Hagel, the political science teacher here at North, said, “I was not surprised about the outcome of the presidential election because of Nate Silver, a respected statistician with the New York Times, but I was surprised by the outcome for the two amendments because I thought that rural Minnesota would have a greater influence.”

            North student Sheldon Saccoman, a Republican, said, “I was not happy about the outcome of the election, but I’m willing to support the president if the rest of the people believe he deserves a second term.” Another North student said, “I wasn’t too shocked, it kinda seemed that Obama was gonna win from the start. It didn’t seem like Romney was put together, except for the first presidential debate.”

            It would seem as though the American people and the people of Minnesota made a decision that closely mirrors that of the students here at North, perhaps the future is being set by the youth these days, four more years with president Obama before the election in 2016, and by then most students at North will be able to vote, and who will win then? Only time will tell.