Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is slated to win the Binghamton University student vote in the 2016 presidential election, according to a survey taken of undergraduate students.
The survey, created by PLSC340 and JUST389B: Public Opinion students, asked BU undergraduate students their opinions on the 2016 election and the current campus climate.
Jonathan Krasno, an associate professor of political science, teaches the class and conducted the survey by first obtaining the email addresses of the 13,856 undergraduate students currently enrolled. After randomly assigning a number to each student, Krasno then sent the survey to 2,000 email addresses. The survey was open for one week, and received 611 responses — a 30.5 percent response rate.
The data found Clinton in the lead, with 65.5 percent of students answering that they would vote for the Democratic nominee if the election were held today, and only 15.6 percent answering the same for Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The data showed that 7.1 percent of students answered that they were undecided in which presidential candidate to vote for, which was greater than the 6.1 percent supporting Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and the 2.6 percent supporting Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
This uncertainty, Krasno said, carried into the local elections. While 40 percent of students supported Democrat Kim Myers in the NY-22 House of Representatives race and 11.5 percent supported Republican Claudia Tenney, 6.1 percent of respondents supported Independent Martin Babinec and a significant 40.2 percent were unsure of which candidate to support.
Similarly, in the Broome County Executive race, 36.2 percent of students supported Democrat Jason Garnar and 11.3 percent supported Republican Debbie Preston, but 51.2 percent were unsure.
“Partisans on both sides don’t appear to have strong feelings [for] their party’s candidates in other races,” Krasno wrote in an email. “A third of Democrats and Republicans aren’t sure whether they’ll vote for the hotly contested House race in Binghamton, and about half are unsure who to vote for for County Executive.”
As far as party identification, 46.9 percent of respondents identified as Democrats, followed by 16.4 percent identifying as Republicans and 26.0 percent identifying as independent. The data also showed that 10.8 percent of respondents answered that they identified with parties not listed in the survey as well.
The data shows that Clinton is performing better with Democrats than Trump is with Republicans; 94 percent of student Democrats plan to vote for Clinton compared to the 71 percent of student Republicans who plan to vote for Trump.
The survey also questioned participants on the location of their registration. Dormitory residents are slightly more likely to be registered in Broome County, at 54.5 percent, than are people who live off campus at 42.6 percent. Krasno said he believes this reflects the efforts made this year to register students, which are easier to do on campus than off, and the effect of the dormitory-registering competition that put residential communities against each other to register the most students.
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8. Three thousand eleven students on campus are registered to vote in Broome County, and Krasno said the University is expecting a record turnout.