Kerry Tops Crimson Poll

Even for the students who have not yet sealed their absentee ballots or punched their chads, the votes are in: an overwhelming majority of Harvard students supports John F. Kerry for president.

Seventy-three percent of eligible voters who responded to a survey conducted by The Crimson over four days this week said they would vote for Kerry if the elections were held today, while only 19 percent said they would support President George W. Bush and 3 percent said they would vote for Independent Ralph Nader.

The poll of 351 undergraduates who are eligible voters has a margin of error of 5.1 percent.

The results depict a campus that is not only overwhelmingly liberal but also deeply invested in the outcome of the election, a heightened political awareness evident in the 84 percent of respondents who said they have followed the election very or somewhat closely and the 93 percent of respondents who said they were registered to vote. Just over 82 percent said they are definitely voting, and 8 percent are likely voters.

Nationwide, the race is neck and neck. A Reuters/Zogby poll taken between Monday and Wednesday found that Bush was supported by 48 percent of likely voters and Kerry by 46. That poll had a margin of error of 2.9 percent.

David C. King, a lecturer at the Kennedy School who served as the faculty adviser to the Institute of Politics’ fall survey, said student interest in politics nationwide has not been this high since Vietnam.

“There is an intensity on college campuses that we have not seen in the last 30 years,” King said. “Across the country, this election is especially pressing.”

The IOP poll—released last week—was comprised of a random sampling of 1,202 students in 210 colleges and universities across the country, not including Harvard.

Its results show a more conservative student base across the country: 59 percent of the nation’s college students preferred Sen. Kerry, with 39 percent supporting President Bush.

Lauren K. Truesdell ’06, spokeswoman for the Harvard Republican Club (HRC), says despite the campus’ overwhelming support for Kerry, she is pleased with the efforts made by campus Republicans to support their candidate.

“Being on such a liberal campus, I think it spurs Republicans into action,” Truesdell said.

She added that though the support for Kerry was broad, she did not think it was particularly strong.

“I think people who are voting for Bush aren’t just voting for him, they’re really enthusiastic about him,” Truesdell said. “I feel like Kerry people are very anti-Bush.”

Students are also divided about which election issues are most important.

Harvard respondents put Iraq at the top of the list of issues guiding their presidential vote, with 43 percent counting it as one of the top two most important issues. That was followed by the economy, with 32 percent putting it first or second, moral values issues such as gay marriage and abortion, which 29 percent said was in the top two, and terrorism and homeland security at 28 percent.

Students nationwide, as reflected in the IOP poll, rank the economy as the most important issue, with Iraq a close second. Twenty-five percent of students in the national poll ranked education as one of the top two issues in the election, compared to only 11 percent of Harvard students.

Jonathan S. Chavez ’05, who helped oversee the IOP poll, speculated that these disparities might be due in part to the location and financial outlook of Harvard students as compared to the rest of the country.

“My guess would be that at Harvard a lot of the issues national students face with education, we don’t, like financial aid,” Chavez said, adding that concern about future job prospects could account for the high premium placed on economics by students nationwide.

“We’re polling students in states that have been a lot harder hit by downturns in the economy,” Chavez said of the IOP’s results.

Men and women are less polarized about the issues and the candidates at Harvard than are students nationwide, the poll results suggest. The IOP poll found a gender gap among college voters, with Kerry leading Bush by 58 to 34 percent among women but only by 47 to 46 percent among men. The Crimson’s poll found a smaller gap, with 77 percent of women supporting Kerry compared to 70 percent of men.

Women at Harvard were less likely to name the economy as one of the top two most important issues in the election, with 26 percent ranking it that high compared to 38 percent of Harvard men. In contrast, 36 percent of women and 23 percent of men said moral values issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, were among the top two most pressing issues.

This week’s polling results represent a shift in campus sentiment from The Crimson’s pre-primary poll in December 2003.

Then, only 18 percent of Democratic-leaning students said they would vote for Kerry, while 47 percent said they would support then-frontrunner Howard Dean, the governor of Vermont.

Even after Kerry won the nomination, his favorable reception among Democrats has been attributed in the press to an “Anything but Bush” attitude.

But Lucien K. Carter ’05-’06, who worked for the Kerry campaign last summer, says this is no longer the case.

“I think people actually really like John Kerry and think he would make a lot better candidate than George Bush or anybody else out there,” he said.

Meghan E. Haggerty ’06, the president of Harvard Students for Kerry, pointed to shifts in Kerry’s campaign leadership and the recent presidential debates as ways the Senator won students’ support.

“I think that in many ways students were impressed by his comeback in the primaries and thus they put more effort into learning about who Sen. Kerry actually is,” Haggerty said.

Six percent of respondents said they strongly approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president, and 15 percent said they “somewhat approve.”

Those who strongly disapprove of Bush’s performance make up 56 percent of students surveyed, and another 22 percent said they somewhat disapprove, for a total of 78 percent.

Those numbers have not changed significantly since December 2003, when 76 percent of students disapproved of how Bush had handled his job while 24 percent approved.

—Staff writer Rebecca D. O’Brien can be reached at robrien@fas.harvard.edu.