Education

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article on the cover of its October 31st edition about the participation of college students in the 2008 election.

The article, “Poll: Students Less Engaged Than Thought” by Elyse Ashburn, can be found in its entirety here.

Some highlights:

A whopping 94 percent of students at four-year colleges in the battleground states — Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — said they were registered to vote. Barack Obama had a two-to-one edge in their support over John McCain.

…

students at four-year colleges account for about 1.48 million people in those four states, or 3.9 percent of their total populations. And while college voters could certainly influence the election outcome, they aren’t necessarily bringing other people to Mr. Obama’s side. Among registered student voters in the poll who supported the Democrat, 42 percent said that at least one of their parents would vote differently from them. Only 21 percent of McCain supporters expected that to happen.

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About half of the registered student voters said they were paying “a lot” of attention to the campaign, while 65 percent of all registered voters said they were paying a lot of attention in the CBS News/New York Times poll.

Students taking active roles in the campaign seemed to prefer tried-and-true ways of participating, the battleground poll found. Just 2 percent had posted videos about a candidate on YouTube, while 11 percent had donated to a campaign, 13 percent had helped with a voter-registration drive, and 13 percent had volunteered with a campaign. Supporters of Mr. Obama were more likely to have done all three.

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Historically, getting young people to register is the biggest hurdle. Once registered, they vote at rates more in line with everyone else’s. During the 2004 presidential election, for example, 60 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 were registered to vote, up from 55 percent in 2000, according to an analysis by Mr. Marcelo, at Tufts. About 82 percent of them actually made it to the polls, similar to the overall rate for registered voters. But because so many more were registered, young adults cast a larger share of the votes in 2004 than in 2000.

So, how politically engaged are college students (by the numbers)?

Only 34% said they had displayed a campaign sign or worn campaign-related apparel or a button, and just 31% said they had recruited a friend to support a campaign.

Fewer than 13% volunteered for a campaign.

Close to 65% said they had visited a candidate’s Web page. But just 27% had visited a candidate’s page on Facebook or MySpace, and just under 23% said they had signed up to be a fan of a candidate on a social-networking site online.

Nearly 68% said they had watched a video about a candidate on YouTube this election season, but only 2% had posted a video about a candidate on the site.

About 51% of registered voters who are students said they were paying “a lot” of attention to the presidential campaign, compared with 65% of all adult registered voters who said so in the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll.

SOURCE: CBS News-UWIRE-Chronicle of Higher Education Poll