Trump Wins LR Mock Election
Trump won the Mock Election in a landslide, receiving almost double the votes for Biden. Kanye West, coming in a distant third managed to take almost 4% with 6 votes.
Of the 60% of respondents who identified themselves with a position on the political scale, nearly 40% chose centrist.
The Political Spectrum was shown in the survey. It is worth noting we don’t know how closely students followed this spectrum when defining their position on the 1 – 7 scale. We also can’t guarantee that students placed themselves accurately.
Left leaning students out number right leaning ones by 6%.
How Strongly Students Supported their Decision
Students were asked how much they supported their choice on a scale of 1 – 5 ranging from “Lesser of 2 Evils” to “Total Support.” Students who didn’t answer are represented on the graph under “None.”
Trump had stronger support than Biden, with nearly double the number of “Total Support” voters. Biden had a significantly higher percentage of “1s” and “2s” than Trump, indicating weaker overall support.
The Effect of News on Vote and Position
Choice between Trump and Biden does not appear to be affected by the amount of days a week students watch news (News Attention). The percent that left the ballot blank, however, does decrease with News Attention. It is important to remember that correlation doesn’t always imply causation.
It is worth noting that originally the question asked how many days a week they “Watched” the news. This was changed to “Watched or Read” to include any news. This change happened while the Sophomore class was taking the survey, and did not affect any other class.
How Students Voted
Only 8% of students who did not declare a political position voted for Biden. 46% voted for Trump, 46% left the ballot blank.
Half of all self declared centrists voted for Trump. Voting for Biden was just as likely as leaving the ballot blank.
Student Willingness to Defend their Choice in Public
“Would you stand behind your choice in person?” was a question on the survey.
Students who voted for Trump were more likely than those who voted for Biden to defend their position in public.
Retrospectively, these results create a multitude of follow up questions about why Biden supporters are less likely to defend their choice in public at Lake Region.
Public confidence is the percent of people who said they would be “willing to defend their position in public” for their choice on the ballet.
Behind the Scenes: Math Processes
Want to check our math? Here is a link to all the results.
Form responses mildly refined for nicer looking graphs:
-
All misspellings of “Kanye West” were corrected.
-
All “Other” responses on the ballot were changed to either “Leave Blank,” “Other,” or in one case “Joe Biden.” Any responses that contained actual names were grouped with “Other” and any answers along the lines of “My dog” or “neither” were changed to “Leave Blank.” The response changed to “Joe Biden” specifically noted that they would be their choice if they “had to choose.”
-
The choice was made to leave out the honorifics for both President Trump and Vice President Biden for ease of reading, and is not meant to disparage either candidate.
If you notice any errors or have any questions, please do send a quick feedback message.
Data analyzed by Liam Lahar and Eric Edlund.
