Political Interest on the Rise Among College Students, IOP Survey Finds

College students are more politically active but less confident in the current political establishment than in the past, according to a national survey carried out by students at the Institute of Politics (IOP) and published yesterday.

Speakers last night at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Kennedy School of Government cited optimistic trends in the data.

“This is very much a youth-driven survey which shows that young people do care about politics,” said IOP Director Jeanne Shaheen, who moderated the event.

The survey found that only 41 percent of college students approve of the job President Bush is doing, and 70 percent of respondents said that they felt elected officials acted on selfish motivations. But students embraced political avenues of change, with 91 percent saying that “running for office is an honorable thing to do.”

Perhaps most surprisingly, the survey found that turnout among people aged 18 to 24 was higher for the 2004 elections than for any presidential election since 1972, the first year in which 18-year-olds could vote. This finding contradicted early reports after the election that turnout among this age group was much lower than expected.

Caitlin W. Monahan ’06, co-chair of the group that conducted the survey, noted at the panel that more than one-third of this age group’s ballots were cast absentee, and were therefore not included in exit polls.

Speakers said they had found that college students’ opinions and degree of political involvement are generally similar to those of their parents, and that students are very much a swing constituency.

The survey identified several new forms of political participation among college students, including blogging and wearing political slogans on T-shirts and wristbands.

“The T-shirt is the new yard sign,” Monahan said. “The good news is that students are political in both traditional and innovative ways. The bad news is that campaigns may not be realizing this.”

Panelists singled out the Internet as a particularly important new political tool.

The survey also identified the 18-24 demographic as particularly religious, with more than one-third of respondents identifying as born-again Christians.

“Religious affiliation is almost the best predictor of partisanship,” said Bill McInturff, who was a pollster for the 2000 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Other panelists included Diane Felsman, who worked as a pollster for the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., and John de la Volpe, who was the survey’s senior adviser.

Krister B. Anderson ’07, the survey group’s other co-chair, said after the forum that reaction to the survey had been “fairly positive.”

Anderson said that while media outlets rarely cite statistics gathered by the group, this is because of methodological issues rather than mistrust of student studies.

“I believe it has been taken as seriously as possible,” he said.