Sixty schools across Montana participated in a mock election Thursday, and — in the absence of tea leaves — politicians and journalists will no doubt be studying the unscientific results for any hint of how grown-up voters will be leaning on Tuesday.

The mock election, sponsored by the Montana secretary of state’s office, included the state’s U.S. Senate and U.S. House races along with both nonpartisan Supreme Court races.

According to the Secretary of State’s Office, “The purpose of the mock election is to familiarize students with the voting process so that they gain the knowledge and confidence needed to comfortably participate in every election, once they become eligible to register and vote.”

The youth election results included a narrow victory for challenger Lawrence VanDyke over incumbent Supreme Court justice Mike Wheat, 955 to 914.

That race has received considerable publicity both because of the markedly different philosophies of the candidates and because of outside money flowing in on both sides. A recent controversial mailer from Stanford and Dartmouth University researchers pegged VanDyke as the conservative in the race and Wheat as the liberal.

Republican Steve Daines handily defeated Democrat Amanda Curtis in the mock Senate race by a vote of 1,345 to 587. Counting other votes cast, that represented a victory of 62 percent for Rep. Daines to 27 percent for state Sen. Curtis. Libertarian Roger Roots claimed 6 percent of the vote.

Ryan Zinke, a Whitefish Republican, also had a large margin of victory over Democrat John Lewis in the U.S. House race, 1,180 to 645 (or 55 percent to 30 percent). Libertarian Mike Fellows received 10.5 percent.

In the remaining Supreme Court race, incumbent Jim Rice sailed to victory over challenger W. David Herbert, 1,250 to 595.

One of Montana’s two ballot issues also was included in the mock election. The referendum to revise the close of late voter registration was defeated by student voters 1,148 to 801, closely mirroring the results of a recent MSU-Billings statewide poll.

Some of the most interesting results of the mock election occurred in response to questions tailored just for students on national and school topics.

Not surprisingly considering the stories in the news recently, students see the “greatest threat to the U.S. today” as deadly diseases (624) followed  by terrorism (549) and economic turmoil (532). Climate change was a distant fifth, with just 69 votes, and nuclear war was in the middle of the pack with 239 votes.

Looking ahead 10 years, however, students worry that nuclear war will be an increasing danger, and with 522 votes it edged economic turmoil (521 votes) as the No. 1 threat. The results suggest that students may be paying attention to the risk of a nuclear Iran, an unpredictable North Korea and increasingly bellicose Russia. (Climate change remained in last place, but did jump up dramatically in total number of votes received to 222.)

On the topic of “undocumented aliens,” the results were nearly evenly divided between two choices that suggested allowing aliens to remain in the country (1,046 votes), and those that encouraged stricter policies that would discourage undocumented aliens from remaining in the United States (951 votes).

Getting to the “important stuff,” middle-school and high-school students were strong supporters of students being allowed to use cellphones in school. There were 821 votes cast for allowing use outside of class time, and 816 votes for using cellphones “anytime” during school hours. Only 50 people voted to ban cellphones.

Elementary school students also were asked, “What is your favorite snack?”

Parents could probably have predicted the outcome: Candy was the favorite of 44 percent while vegetables only managed to attract the support of 3.6 percent of the youthful voters. It should be noted that fruit did pull in a healthy 28 percent share of the vote.

To view full results from the mock election, go to https://youthvote.mt.gov.

Managing editor Frank Miele may be reached at 758-4447 or by email at edit@dailyinterlake.com.