Who’s Next? Polling for the President

The student-body presidential election is a time of excitement and anticipation at the end of the school year. Freshman, sophomores, and juniors pile into the auditorium, all pondering the question as old as politics: Who will rule? For the first time ever, the News performed preliminary polling in order to see who currently leads the race. Six juniors have put their names forward as candidates: Andrew Goodale, Randy Liu, Asher Mathai, Connor Souryal, Toby Rosenband, and Rohan Vesely. 

To effectively poll the student body that will be voting in the upcoming election, the News selected random samples of thirty students each from the current freshman, sophomore, and junior classes. The seniors were not sampled, as they do not vote for the president who will succeed them. This yields a sample size of 90 students, of which we were able to get 84 responses, a 93% response rate. The poll was sent to the randomly-selected student by email as a google sheet, with the question simply asking “If the 2025 student body presidential election were held today, for whom would you vote?” 

It is important to remember that while all students are created equal, their votes are not. Juniors are far more valuable than freshmen when the weighted-vote formula is applied. Thus, it seems that if Asher can stay in control of the junior vote, he should have a clear path to victory. The other candidates should begin working on the junior population, but also not forget about generating underclassmen support.When the votes were tallied, freshman votes were multiplied by 1, sophomores by 2, and juniors by 3, as this is how the votes are weighted on election day. In total, all 30 freshmen responded, 28 sophomores responded, and 26 juniors responded. 

So who won? Asher Mathai led the weighted votes with 42, followed by Rohan Vesely with 32 and Toby Rosenband with 28. Asher’s victory was largely due to a strong junior base, with twice as many juniors voting for him than any other candidate. Alternatively, Rohan led the freshmen opinion, receiving a substantially higher amount of freshman votes than any of the other candidates. 

With all this being said, the News is 95% confident that between 19.1% and 32.6% of the student body currently supports Asher Mathai to be the next student-body president, an interval higher than any other candidate. Rohan’s 95% confidence interval does overlap with Ashers, standing at between 13.6% and 25.8% of student body support, so the election will be far from a landslide. There is also much potential error from relying on one sample, so I guess we'll just have to wait until election day to know for sure. 

We asked a few students about the methodology behind their vote. Chase Carpenter ‘26, who voted for Asher, claimed, “I believe that his passion for Gilman, both academically and athletically, would cause students to succeed in both aspects.” Michael Decosta ‘26 begged to differ, arguing, “I think that Toby has the passion, spirit, and determination to be a great student body president. Compared to the rest of the candidates, Toby sticks out as one who especially embodies those qualities.” 

But how can students feel confident in picking a president in these polls with such little knowledge about each candidate? And what about on election day? How can students choose between the options when each candidate only has a few minutes to introduce themselves? If you are unfamiliar with some of the names who will be vowing for your vote in May, or are simply looking for an introduction to your options, take a look at the “Intro to the Candidates” article, also featured in this issue.