The nation’s kids have spoken! The results of Scholastic’s big presidential poll, an online and paper ballot election involving a quarter million kids in grades 1-12, came out yesterday, and it looks like a shoo-in for Barack Obama, who snagged 57 percent of the vote. John McCain grabbed 39 percent of the kiddie vote and another 4 percent of the votes were write-ins for Hillary Clinton, Stephen Colbert and the Jonas Brothers. (And who can blame them? Colbert is patriotic, Lincolnish and multigrain.)

So why does a children’s ballot matter? Scholastic has been doing these children’s elections since 1940 and in virtually every case, the kids’ votes have reflected the general election outcome. The two exceptions? In 1948, kids picked Thomas E. Dewey over Harry S. Truman in a vote that echoed the Chicago Tribune’s now infamous and oh-so-wrong headline. And in 1960, children gave the presidential pick to Richard M. Nixon over John F. Kennedy. We’ll know in three weeks whether the kids got it right this time.