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Campus Poll: Political prowess proves paltry

Posted on Oct 28, 2008 in Opinion

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If you follow broadcast political news it’s hard to miss some of the coverage of college age voters. It’s also hard to miss the portrayal of college age voters as less than intellectual in their knowledge of what exactly they are voting for. As again and again I saw college students portrayed as only slightly more intelligent than house pets, I became more than a little perturbed. It seemed they were always polling college students at protests, or college students at concerts. Why not poll college students at — oddest of places — a college campus?

So I decided to interview 118 college students in that strangest of environments, a college campus. I asked four questions; whom do you support for president?; name a current member of the Congress (House or Senate); name a current Supreme Court justice; and name the current vice president.

I chose these questions because they deal with the three branches of our government and how aware the student was of them. The question about whom respondents supported for president could also yield interesting results as to if one side or other had more knowledge of politics. In the end the overall results, sadly, seemed to push students more toward the “house pet” end of the scale as opposed to the “politically knowledgeable” end of the scale.

Of all 118 respondents, a total of 354 questions, 155 of those questions were answered correctly. Of Obama respondents, 58 answered 72 questions correctly (out of 174); 52 McCain supporters answered 71 questions correctly (out of 156). Both of these were equally dismal, coming in well below 50 percent correct. The only somewhat bright spot were the 8 undecided students, who answered 12 questions correctly (out of 24), and just squeaked in at 50 percent.

The easiest question to answer was “Who is the current vice president?” Of those polled, 87 correctly answered Dick Cheney; 43 Obama supporters, 38 McCain supporters, and 6 undecided; almost dead even between Obama and McCain.

The second easiest question to answer was “Name a current member of Congress (House or Senate)?” Here, 59 correctly answered this question, 25 correct Obama supporters, 29 correct McCain supporters, and 5 correct undecided voters. Once again, the results were almost dead even amongst McCain and Obama supporters.

By far the hardest question was “Name a current Supreme Court Justice.” Let me add at this point, the Supreme Court really does exist. The number of correct answers lead me to believe that some thought it was just a fairy tale.
Obama supporters answered the question right 4 times, and McCain supporters did just as well, 4 correct answers. Undecided students responded correctly once.

My high hopes for UAB students to be a shining beacon of political knowledge didn’t exactly work out as planned. Interestingly enough, the poll indicates an equality of ignorance among presidential candidate supporters.

I am not sure if an equality of ignorance is really what we want in the people who are electing our next president, and certainly not what we want to prevail in a democratically elected government.

After all the buzz of “Rock the Vote” and “Vote or Die,” it seems like real political awareness has been lost in all the hype.

Email: drake7@uab.edu