A Black & White poll of 231 students conducted over the past three days found junior class officer Ari Gutman as the narrow frontrunner in next Wednesday’s election for Student Body President.

Gutman currently leads with about 21% of the vote, followed by Secretary Kueho Choi with 17%, and junior Ari Neugeboren with 16%. The remaining five candidates combine for the remaining 46%. It is important to note, however, that these results will likely swing wildly following the candidates’ speeches on Monday, which is likely most students first extended exposure to many of the candidates.

Meanwhile, in the election for the SMOB, Whitman students narrowly favor the incumbent, BCC’s Eric Guerci, over Richard Montgomery’s Alex Abrosimov by a margin of 53% to 47%. These results mark a dramatic improvement over his 50 point loss to RM’s Rachit Agarwal last year.

Since juniors responded to the poll at a higher rate than freshmen or sophomores, the numbers slightly favor candidates that are popular with juniors. As a result, our “polls-plus” model predicts slightly different results: Gutman with 20%, Neugeboren with 19% and Choi with 16%.

“I just want to thank everyone for the support they have given me on my campaign,” Gutman said. “We can make Whitman better, I have no doubt in my mind.”

Here are three of the biggest takeaways from the poll.

Take-away #1: SGA voting is heavily gender-polarized

In analyzing the data, the most noticeable takeaway was the gender-polarization: candidates favored by one gender tended to be less favored by the other. For example, over 80% of frontrunner Ari Gutman’s votes come from females. Of the top five candidates, Choi has the most even gender split with a roughly 7:3 male to female ratio.

Takeaway #2: The junior class is the most divided

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the junior class was also the grade most divided on its support, with the top candidates (Choi and junior class president Jaiwen Hsu) peaking out at 19 percent. In contrast, among freshmen, one candidate, Ari Gutman, looms above all others at 42 percent. These results shouldn’t come as a shock: Juniors are more likely to know the candidates personally while the freshmen are more likely receiving their information from lunchtime meet-and-greets and hallway posters.

Similarly, the juniors seem to value elected office experience more than the other grades–Hsu and Choi are both veterans on the SGA, with Hsu as junior class president and Choi as secretary.

Takeaway #3: Endorsements (may) matter

Interestingly, Neugeboren voters were more likely than other students to support Guerci in the SMOB election: 64% of Neugeboren voters prefer Guerci for SMOB compared to 50 percent for the non-Neugeboren population. Perhaps Guerci’s perceived support has had an effect–Guerci has posted in Neugeboren’s campaign Facebook page expressing his appreciation for Neugeboren’s passion and partnership on issues like final exams and snow days.

This could, of course, be reverse causation: It’s not that Guerci supporters flocked to Neugeboren upon his endorsement but rather that Neugeboren supporters gravitated to Guerci because they were seen as being on the same page. It could also be simply a coincidence–both Neugeboren and Guerci had relatively strong support among freshmen, in which case the pseudo-endorsement effect is trivial.

Speeches will air Monday during school, and voting for both SGA and SMOB occurs Wednesday.

The poll surveyed 231 random voters from grades 9 through 11 from Apr 20-22. The margin of error is ± 5 percentage points. Justin Baker and Anna McGuire contributed to this report.