I think most elementary school kids are aware of the campaign but most likely not the rhetoric. Any thought they have are heavily influenced by their peers which in turn are influenced by what those peers hear at home. Middle school kids I am sure are aware of the rhetoric but I suspect does not care about this campaign which is the furthest from what is important to them. So I doubt that there is any real influence.
My own 5 year old son who follows the campaign by listening to the radio sunday morning when I drive him to various classes/events since the primaries is a #NeverTurmp. I never talk about the election in front of my son and I was not even aware he understood what was going on until back in Feb he told me he is for Rubio and then Kasich over Cruz and Trump. His still talks about why Rubio is not back in the campaign and if not him where is Kasich or Cruz. His hierarchy of preference seems to be Rubio Kasich Cruz Sanders Clinton and Trump. I try to get him to back Trump over Clinton to no avail. He seems to detest Trump and I am sure part of it stems from what he hears in school from his peers. If so it seems to fit my observation in my neighborhood the tide is clearly running against Trump as my son's peers must to hearing things at home to turn them against Trump. Anyway I had to tell my son that Rubio went back to FL, Kasich went back to OH, and Cruz went back to TX. This election a good chance for me to teach him all the states in the USA on the map since he kept on asking questions about Rubio Kasich and Cruz. I actually used the uselectionatlas site and the 538 site as props for this. A this rate I am sure my son, if he is still interested, will be a partisan for Rubio in 2020 assuming Trump loses.
I did not get any sense that my son nor his peers picked up any negative language as a result of the election.
The fact that he opposes Cruz so much likely indicates he was listening to that whole narrative of the 'contested convention' talk, the media only went out of their way to slam trump and then cruz, which had an incidental effect of attempting to feed a narrative to a default 'non-trump/cruz' candidate(s). I don't think the cruz opposition was ideological, considering that he had Kasich over Cruz.
You have to remember, nate silver, etc. were constantly hammering the line of 'the party decides', that was the media narrative for months. Trump/Cruz/Carson were all going to fade away, etc.
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