Students Surveying Outside University Hall | Photo provided by Lee Hannah
By Lee Hannah
Professor of Political Science Dr. Lee Hannah and his Campaigns and Elections class administered a survey to 384 students at Wright State University. The survey offers a glimpse into students' political leanings and intentions ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Dr. Hannah and his students submitted several essays, covering many topics, to the Wright State Guardian. Here is an overview of their findings.
Background
A New York Timesanalysis showed that if the polls miss as badly as they did in 2020, then Donald Trump is poised to be re-elected president with 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’ 226.
However, if the polls undercount Democratic support as much as they did in 2022, Kamala Harris will be the first woman elected president with 303 electoral votes to Trump’s 235.
This fall, my Campaigns and Elections class developed and administered a survey to 384 students at Wright State University. Does our poll provide clues about who will ultimately be elected president on November 5? No, not really.
For several reasons, our poll has its limitations. But, to my knowledge, nobody has attempted to systematically survey Wright State students on their political opinions. This is a limited, but first attempt to do that.
After developing a survey as a class, we spent two class periods on campus inviting people to participate in our survey. We carried clipboards with paper ballots that students could complete and drop in a ballot box.
We also shared QR codes with students who wanted to complete the survey on their phone. We had 199 students complete our paper survey and an additional 185 take the survey online.
We also carried around voter registration forms and absentee ballot applications and took opportunities to register students and ensure they had a plan to vote.
Here are a few highlights of our results.
We aren’t trying to predict the election
Most opinion polls that are published at this point are screening for likely voters. If someone is unregistered or doesn’t have a history of voting, they are excluded from the survey. We wanted to hear from everyone at Wright State regardless of whether they are registered, eligible to vote, or planning to vote.
Eighty-one percent of the students we interviewed were eligible to vote (18 or over and a U.S. citizen) and registered.
Thirteen percent of respondents were eligible to vote but not registered (we hope that we changed that number!), and just less than six percent of people we interviewed were not eligible, the majority being international students.
Students are planning on voting
We were heartened to find that ninety-three percent of the people that we interviewed were “definitely” or “probably” going to vote. But we do have to caution readers that research shows that people overreport their intention to vote.
However, people less likely to vote are also less likely to stop and take a political survey from a classmate – this is a phenomenon called nonresponse bias.
Taken together, our sample likely overestimates how many students are voting.
Most students have a plan for voting
We also discovered that most students have a plan for voting.
The graph below shows that over sixty percent of students are planning on voting in-person on Election Day.
We also looked at whether there were any differences in vote method between Democrats (blue) and Republicans (red). While majorities of all students are waiting until Election Day to vote, a larger percentage of Democrats are voting by mail.
Wright State students think nonvoters abstain due to apathy, confusion, or disappointment with their options
We also asked students to think about the top obstacles that keep students from voting.
We used a survey question that was asked in a recent Campus Vote Project (CVP) poll of college students.
The top three reasons given by students for not voting are the belief that voting doesn’t change anything, a lack of information on the voting process (i.e., poll locations, registration deadlines, etc.), and disliking the candidate options.
These results were very similar to CVP’s results.
The Democrats have a comfortable lead among Wright State students.
Our poll found that 46.4% of our students preferred Kamala Harris to 30.9% for Donald Trump.
If we remove undecideds from the equation, Harris leads Trump with 61.9% of the vote compared to 38.1% for Trump.
The fact that Harris leads among our sample is not too surprising given that college students tend to be more Democratic than the general population.
We found that Wright State students also prefer Senator Sherrod Brown (61.9%) over Republican challenger Bernie Moreno (36.1%).
In most elections, incumbent officeholders have several advantages over their challengers. However, most students aren’t paying attention to this race.
If we add back in undecideds, the majority of students (41.1%) report being undecided compared to 37.6% for Brown and only 21.3% for Moreno.
Most statewide polls are showing Brown overperforming Kamala Harris by about 8% - which is what he may need to keep his seat.
But, a lot of students are undecided
We were surprised that with less than a month to go, 19.4% of our students were undecided.
However, this does fall in line with other studies. Young people vote at a much lower rate than older voters and are less involved in politics in general.
Campaigns classify many young and undecided people as “peripheral voters” and expend much effort in the last few weeks of an election trying to get them to the polls.
In fact, we found that 75% of the people who don’t know who they are voting for also reported not following news about national politics that much (compared to 43% of Trump voters and 37% of Harris voters reporting that they don’t follow the news that much).
The gender gap among Wright State students is similar to the national polls
Since the presidential election of 1980 between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, a higher proportion of women have voted for the Democratic candidate for president.
Polling in 2024 shows that the gender gap will not only be wide this election, it will be widest among Gen Z voters. The gap that we find (9.7%) is actually much smaller than what national opinion polls are finding among Gen Z which is closer to 30%.
Take our poll with a grain of salt
We were very limited in who we had the opportunity to talk to. I only had the students conduct the poll during our class period (11:00-12:20) on two Tuesdays in October. Although others might have seen a flyer and completed the online poll.
We did not interview students at the Lake Campus or at the medical school, and we likely missed most graduate students who tend to have evening classes.
We talked to an even number of males and females even though 55% of Wright State students are female.
Our poll was as equally diverse as the Wright State student body: White (73% sample/75% of WSU students); Black (12%/10%); Asian (10%/4%); and Hispanic (3%/5%). But in general, we don’t have a sampling design that allows us to make sweeping generalizations about Wright State students.
We plan to build on this in future years, so keep an eye out for my Campaigns and Elections class that will be offered during semesters corresponding with midterm and presidential elections.
Even with its limits, our poll includes some interesting insights
Over the next week and a half, you’ll have an opportunity to read several essays from my excellent students in Campaigns and Elections. I hope you find the essays to be as insightful and interesting as I do.
And more importantly, make sure you have a plan to vote! If you have any questions about the election and voting, please reach out to me: lee.hannah@wright.edu
