While the November election had an age requirement of 18, another ballot in September had a different entry standard—be a member of an ACHS government class. Known as the mock election, 675 students went in droves to the Minnie Howard Forum room to fill out a replica of the November ballot.

Looking at the results of the mock election and comparing them to the results of the real November election has yielded some interesting results and trends. 

Alexandria remained staunchly blue in the real November elections, despite the early Virginia-wide red wave in the presidential vote where President Elect Donald Trump gained almost three percent of the vote from 2020. Vice President Harris, even though she lost the national election, won decisively in Alexandria, and Timothy Kaine and Don Beyer retained their seats in Congress. Democrats swept all six city council seats, a streak that hasn’t been broken since 2009. 

The results of both the mock and November Alexandria elections were identical when only looking at the winners; Harris won the presidential vote, Kaine won the Senate vote, Beyer won the House vote, Alyia Gaskins won Mayor, the six Democrats running for city council won all six seats, and all nine school board members, running unopposed, won in both the mock and November elections. Additionally, the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot, which asked about tax exemptions for the families of soldiers, passed in both elections.

Viewing the elections in a utilitarian way may be uninteresting, especially with such identical results, but the margins by which candidates won holds more implications.

National Elections

First, the national elections—President, Senate, and the House of Representatives. In the presidential vote, Harris won 77.04 percent of the real Alexandria vote, 8.06 percent more than in the ACHS mock election, where she only won 68.98 percent. President Elect Trump also had a larger percent of the vote in the real Alexandria election, where he acquired 19.91 percent, almost two percent greater than the 18.07 percent he received in the mock election. The votes that both Harris and Trump lost in the mock election culminated mostly in favor of Green Party nominee Jill Stein, who won 4.52 percent in the mock election, a large difference when compared to the 1.02 percent she won in the real election. Stein, a third-party candidate, being more popular in the mock election is a trend that can be observed in several other races.

In the Senate elections, the mock and real elections yielded similar results, with Democrat Tim Kaine winning with 78.25 percent of the real vote and 73.04 percent of the mock vote. His Republican opponent, Hung Cao, garnered 24.55 percent of the mock vote and 21.47 percent of the real vote. 

The third-party trend, reflected first by Stein in the presidential vote, is staggering in the vote for Virginia’s 8th district House of Representatives member. The results of this race were generally unsurprising in the real election, with Democrat incumbent Don Beyer winning with 75.07 percent, Republican Jerry Torres collecting 21.01 percent, and long-shot independent David Kennedy getting 2.54 percent of the vote. The mock election, however, is a different story; Beyer’s vote percentage plummeted to 52.66 while Torres dropped to 13.55 percent. Kennedy racked up most of these lost votes, shooting up to 22.07 percent, placing him second above Torres in the mock election. Bentley Hensel, another independent in the House race, also did markedly better in the mock election, winning 8.98 percent of the vote, more than he did in the real election, where he only scored 1.10 percent.

Local Elections

Mayor-elect Alyia Gaskins, who ran as an unopposed Democrat, won 93 percent of the vote in both the mock and real elections, with the real election results favoring her by 0.64 percent. Gaskins is set to become Alexandria’s first ever Black female mayor. 

The lower percentages for Democrats and higher percentages for Republicans and independents in the mock election is a trend perhaps most evident in the city council election results.

In both the mock and real elections, the results for city council were the same overall, as all six Democratic candidates running won the six city council seats. Even the order of Democrats in terms of receiving the most votes was similar; in both the mock and real elections, Sarah Bagley won the most votes, John Chapman came in second, Abdul Elnoubi in fifth, and Kirk McPike in sixth. The third and fourth places were opposite in the mock and real election; in the real election, Jacinta Greene received more votes than Canek Aguirre, putting her in third and Aguirre in fourth, and vice versa in the mock election.

Although no law exists stating that the candidate who receives the most votes for city council must serve as Vice Mayor, it is a precedent that has existed for decades. The result of the race for Vice Mayor has yielded the same result in both the mock and real elections, with Sarah Bagley winning the most city council votes in both races. 

The mock election, as opposed to the real election, showed a shift away from the left and towards Republicans and independents, something that may be representative of the younger mock election electorate. On average, Democrats running for city council received 1.3 percent less of the vote in the mock election than they did in the real election; conversely, Celianna Gunderson, the single Republican candidate for city council showed a 1.7 percent increase in the mock election, and Roy Byrd and Mason Butler, the two independent city council candidates, averaged a 1.9 percent increase in the mock election. Byrd ran a competitive campaign leading up to the real Alexandria election in November, but did not secure a seat nonetheless.

In the mock election for city council, there were more than 1,700 over-votes reported. An over-vote occurs when a voter selects more candidates than are permitted for a certain office; in the case of city council, this indicates voters selected seven or more candidates for city council, which only consists of six seats.

All nine school board candidates ran unopposed, with four non-incumbent members to serve their first term next year. All candidates received around a third of the vote in both the mock and real elections, and Write-Ins were not reported for the mock election.

Looking Forward

The adult Alexandria electorate continued its blue streak in November, with Democrats sweeping every race. The younger high school electorate, as shown in the mock election results, seems to be shifting away from the left ever so slightly. Time will tell whether these mock election results will translate to the Alexandria elections in 2027, as underage voters will finally have the chance to vote in a legitimate election.