America’s most important youth vote barometer has come out and the results have got to be encouraging for the McCain campaign. In the Nickelodeon Kids Pick The President Poll, Obama won with just 51 percent of the vote. McCain pulled 49 percent of the 2.2 million votes.

The results of an admittedly unscientific poll from the network that airs “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “iCarly” wouldn’t seem to matter that much, but they’ve actually been pretty accurate. Just like Ohio almost always goes the winner’s way, the Nick kids have picked correctly in four of the last five elections, the only hiccup coming in 2004, when they went with John Kerry.

The real question is why was the race so close? Obama is supposed to be the candidate of the youth- he’s the one that has energized college campuses and lit up the Internet. John McCain, on the other hand, isn’t an electric speaker and looks like he could haunt kids’ nightmares after an episode of “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”. Obama only pulling 51 percent could be perceived as a loss, especially considering that Kerry, who’s just slightly more dynamic than Olmec from “Legends of the Hidden Temple,” pulled 57 percent of the Nick vote. Obama seems like he’d appeal to kids - he has adorable daughters, attends soccer games and has a hip appeal, especially among young adults. He even pulled 64 percent of youth voters (ages 18-29) in a Washington Post poll. There’s not much data available about who voted in Nick’s poll (for some reason, Nickelodeon doesn’t keep strict demographic data like Gallup), so we can only speculate as to why Obama polled low. Their politics are probably coming from their parents, who must tend more conservative. That could also come back to the age issue - with a lot of Obama’s popularity coming from the under-30 demographic, there are going to be far fewer of his supporters with kids.

But whatever the reason, Obama’s going to want to capture that youth set before they reach voting age. My recommendation: get slimed!