Forget CNN.
Never mind Fox News.
Gallup? Fuhgeddaboutit.
Who cares what all those pollsters and pundits have to say?
South Sioux City High School senior Izzie Tranmer had the 2024 Presidential election all figured out, even down to the two states with split electoral votes, in predicting Donald Trump’s 312-226 win over Kamala Harris in last week’s race for the White House.
While the news networks and pollsters were all trying in vain to predict who would win which state, Tranmer did her research, made some tough decisions on close races, and wound up correctly picking the winner in all 50 states, including Maine and Nebraska, where the electoral votes are split based on who wins each state’s district.
Tranmer’s presidential picks were part of a project on the electoral college in Mark Casey’s government class at South Sioux City High School. Casey has had kids in his class pick during every election since 1988, but this was the first time a student correctly picked the winner in all 50 states.
“She even got the districts split in Nebraska and Maine right. Nobody on TV got it right and she did,” Casey said.
Each year there is an election for President since 1988, Casey has given students the opportunity to research the election and then try to guess which candidate will win in each state.
And Tranmer went 50 for 50, including the correct pick in each of the key swing states, all of which went to Trump.
“I knew California would go to (Harris) and Texas would be (Trump), so I just focused on the races in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona,” Tranmer said.
Tranmer did her research, looking at the electoral maps of the last 20 elections that Casey has posted in his classroom and looking up a variety of websites and using Google to try and figure out which side to pick in each state.
“Some of them I just had to guess because the research was saying one side or the other,” she said. “I guessed on Pennsylvania and I went against what a lot of sources were saying on Michigan because I just had a feeling it would be red.”
It wasn’t until early last Wednesday morning that her final two picks — Arizona and Nevada — came through.
“I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning watching the results, and as the states turned I was thinking I got another one right and another one,” she said. “We were waiting on Nevada and Arizona and I was so surprised when they called them.”
Nebraska and Maine, which splits electoral votes based on which candidate wins in each district, both split their votes. Nebraska’s First District, which includes the city of Omaha, went with Harris, and Tranmer strongly considered the Second District before deciding on Trump, who went on to win that district and the Third District to secure four of the state’s five electoral votes.
“I figured the Omaha district would be blue because it had gone that way in the past, and I just went with my gut and said Lincoln would go red,” she said. “Getting those two states right was most surprising for me, because it’s really tough to pick those and get them right.”
Seniors at South Sioux City High School take government and economics classes their senior year, and Tranmer said that while she’s not one to talk about politics much, she enjoys learning about it in Mr. Casey’s class.
“He’s the best teacher for this because he’s passionate and makes it enjoyable to listen to,” she said. “You don’t know which side he favors because he shares information on both sides and you can base your opinion from there, and that’s how it should be.”
