Students Play Fantasy Politics During Iowa Caucuses
By Suril Kantaria ’09
News Staff Reporter
While Iowa residents were taking election polls so that political analysts could best predict the outcome of the Iowa caucuses, many Choate students and faculty members participated in a primary-like election poll in early December.
Four Seniors Selected
The poll was conducted by four students in Mr. Goodyear’s Effecting Political Change (EPC) class, with the aide of politics teacher Mr. Goodyear and Director of Academic Technology and history teacher Mr. Backon. The four EPC students, Alex Hillbrand’08, Amanda Ratner ’08, Chris Mitchell’08, and Julie Paret ’08, volunteered to help run the poll because “Mr. Goodyear wanted students who hadn’t used Survey Monkey before so they could learn the ropes,” according to Julie Paret.
While Mr. Goodyear supervised the entire project, Mr. Backon’s role was more technology based. Mr. Backon said, “Mr. Goodyear recruited me to help the four students put together the primary ballets on Survey Monkey and also to set up the whole process of making sure all students get notified with the link to the survey and figuring out how to get the results and analyze the results. I was more of a technical advisor than anything else on this project.”
Asking the Right Questions
The students created demographic questions that appeared on the survey. These questions allowed them to analyze the results by form, party, race, and country of origin.
Obama Takes Student Lead
As to the results, 60 percent of the student Democrats who took the survey voted Obama over the other Democratic presidential candidates. Clinton received 24 percent of the vote, while third place finisher Edwards only received eight percent. Democrats comprised 72 percent of the students who took the survey.
The Republican race amongst the student voters also ended in a landslide victory. Giuliani led the student Republican poll with 56 percent of the vote, while Romney trailed in second with 17 percent. McCain was a close third place finisher with 15 percent of the student Republican vote. The poll had a much smaller population size, as only 16 percent of the students to take the survey identified themselves as Republicans.
The top two Democratic candidates finished much closer in the faculty poll. Obama won the Democratic faculty vote with 41 percentage points. Clinton finished in second with 35 percent of the vote, while Edwards trailed in third with only 11 percentage points. Eighty-four percent of the faculty to take the poll indicated that they were Democrats.
On the Republican side of the faculty poll, McCain won in a landslide with 35 percent of the vote. There was a three-way tie for second place, in which Huckabee, Romney, and Giuliani each received 18 percentage points. Thompson and Paul tied for third with six percent of the vote. Similar to the student voters, there were fewer Republicans than Democrats amongst the faculty participants. Only eight percent of the faculty voters checked the Republican box.
As to Obama’s victories amongst the student and faculty Democrats, Alex Hillbrand said, “Obama is a younger guy and appeals to younger more change oriented voters. We split up the faculty by age and he got more votes from the younger faculty members.”
When asked about Giuliani’s landslide victory and Huckabee’s lackluster support amongst the students, Hillbrand said: “As to Huckabee’s poor showing among the students, we don’t have many evangelicals around here. I think Giuliani did as well as he did amongst the students partially because there are so many New Yorkers and also because many students recognize his name since he was all over the press during 9/11.”
Mr. Backon also commented on the results: “Choate has traditionally been a fairly liberal school when it comes to politics. I was a little surprised that the faculty poll was not a landslide. Students went very heavily for Giuliani who has been pretty much invisible in these primaries so far yet the faculty went for McCain….It looks like the faculty may be better predictors of who the candidates ultimately may be than the students are. That is not surprising because the faculty probably follow politics more closely than the students do.”
In fact, a question on the survey asked if the voter follows politics. The three responses were yes, somewhat, and no. As Mr. Backon confirmed the faculty responded mostly yes. Only 30 percent of the students taking the survey responded yes. Fifty-six percent responded somewhat and the remaining 14 percent of students responded no.
Few Students Follow Race
The relatively smaller number of students who follow politics compared to the faculty may have indicated why the student polls were dramatically different than the faculty polls. Amanda Ratner reasoned, “Because there were very few student voters who follow politics, a lot of people just voted for big names such as Obama and Giuliani since the other names they probably didn’t recognize.”
The results of the student poll for either party do not match with the national polls. The Democratic faculty poll’s results more closely resemble the national polls. In any case, Ratner points out, “Choate is a not a cross section of the general American population.”
The voter turnout for both the student and faculty polls was superb. Fifty-three percent of the student body took the survey; where as 65 percent of the faculty participated in the poll.
Alex Hillbrand noted that the turnout was more than a real primary probably because “it’s not like people had to drive anywhere to vote because we delivered the ballot to their inboxes.”
Conferences Help Survey
Most of the students who took the survey finished within the first thirty minutes the survey was out. The email with the link to the survey was sent before conference block started on Friday, December 7th. About 150 students responded during the short 30 minute conference block.
Mr. Backon commented on this phenomenon: “The observation is consistent with what people say about doing surveys—people are going to answer as soon as they read the information or they aren’t going to answer at all. This survey proved a point I’ve heard before but didn’t see in action. It is different for faculty because they only read their email certain times per day.”
Many students started the survey but were unable to finish. Mr. Backon said, “Many students started the process but some of them may have had a problem with the network and didn’t finish. In any case the turnout was better than a normal primary; the turnout in Iowa was close to the 40 percent range.”
Sophomores particularly had a problem with the survey. Sixty-six sophomores started to take the survey but didn’t finish. Amanda Ratner explained, “Maybe [many sophomores] got to a question they didn’t like or their computers crashed.”
Alex Hillbrand sarcastically added, “Sophomores are likely to have malfunctioning computers, I think that’s really the issue.”
Students Unsure of Party
Mr. Backon had yet another theory as to why so many students started the survey but failed to complete it: “Before you can choose your candidate you have to pick a party, I’m not sure that every student knows which party their candidate is in. They may have picked Republican and not seen their candidate on the list because that candidate is a Democrat. So they may have just said, ‘I’m not going to vote.’ The survey required you to know what party your candidate was in.”
The poll was mainly analyzed and discussed in Mr. Goodyear’s Effecting Political Change classes immediately after the results came out.
Mr. Backon said, “One of the major components of EPC is to learn about the electoral process. This gave them first hand experience at running their own internal primary. I think it was also to get them to think about how you can break down information and analyze information as a result of a primary.”
The election polls will not end with this one. Although this was the first online poll, students in the past voted in campus wide polls for the general presidential election by putting a ballot in a box in the dining hall.
More Mock Elections to Come
Mr. Backon explained that students taking American Political Institutions this fall will probably run a school-wide presidential election. He also stated, “Now that we have experience doing a poll online, we probably will continue doing it that way.”
