Presidential Election 2008
Lesson 1: Who’s Who???
Task #1: Although the presidential election is over one year away, the contest is already heating up! Do a little internet research to discover who is currently in the running for President of the United States for the 2008 Election!
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/ http://www.4president.org/ http://thepresidentproject2008.com/default.aspx http://www.realclearpolitics.com/topic/?topic=election_2008 http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/
Who’s Who???
Task #2: Create a word document using tables to organize your initial research. Choose 8 candidates – 4 Democrats and 4 Republicans. You will need the candidate’s name, political party, current position, money raised to date, campaign website. Follow example below. Candidate John Edwards Mitt Romney Party Democrat Current Job Trial lawyer; former US Senator ... $ Raised $23 million Website http://johne dwards.com/ ...
Republican
...
Who’s Who???
Task #3: In Excel, create a graph or a pie chart showing who has raised the most money to date!
Lesson 2: Mock Election
Task #1: Using the 8 candidates you researched yesterday, create a poll for your classmates. You must ask four questions:
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Are you a Democrat or Republican? If you could only vote for a Democrat, who would you vote for? If you could only vote for a Republican, who would you vote for? Out of all the candidates, who do you want to be president?
Mock Election
Task #2: Create an Excel chart tallying the votes from the Democrats for all candidates, and the votes from Republicans for all candidates.
8th Grade Mock Election
Presidential Candidates
Hillary Clinton Barack Obama John Edwards Bill Richardson Rudy Guiliani John McCain Mitt Romney Fred Thompson
Democrats
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Republicans
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mock Election
Task #3: Using Excel, display your results as a bar graph.
1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0
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Mock Election
Task #4: Using Excel, represent the numbers of democrats and republicans that voted for each candidate. Key: Democrats (Blue)
25 20 15 10 5 0
Republicans (Red)
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WRAP IT UP!!!
• Present your findings to the class. Did your favorite candidate win? Who do you predict will win the 2008 Presidential Election? • Coming Up ... Let’s discuss the issues!