Our foundation has collected the primary voting records of tenured
faculty members at Indiana University. We would like to compare those
records with the student body of I.U., if possible, but generally of
college students. Is the tenured faculty more Democrat or less?

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Request for Question Clarification by darrel-ga on 31 May 2003 12:52 PDT

Hello IPR--

This sounds like an interesting comparison to make, and I'd like to
try and help.

A couple points of clarifcation, if I may.

The subject line in your question infers you're looking for the
political affiliation of college students either nationwide OR in
Indiana. Which are you looking for?

Second, you have stated that you have the records of the primary
voting records of IU faculty. Then you ask for a comparison with IU
students. Could you supply me with the records you have, so I'm able
to make an appropriate comparison?

Third, I'm a bit confused as to whether you're really looking for me
to make the comparison or whether you're looking for me to track down
the voting records of IU students. Could you clarify?

Thank you,

darrel-ga

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Clarification of Question by ipr-ga on 02 Jun 2003 06:03 PDT

Darrel: We know that of the 504 I.U. Tenured faculty members declaring
their party in a primary, 85 percent are Democrat. We would like to
put that in perspective. We also know that Monroe County voters are 62
percent Democrat. It would be interesting to know how students at I.U.
compare with those percentages or, failing that, how U.S. college
students compare (are they 80 percent Democrat or 95 percent
Democrat?) All I have been able to find is self-described affiliation
of incoming freshmen, which is too small a snapshot.

Hello,

I have found the following, very recent, data that provides a national
picture of the political affiliations of college students:

Q. When it comes to voting, do you consider yourself to be affiliated
with the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, or are you
Independent or Unaffiliated with a major party?

AFFILIATION........................4/03....10/02... 10/01... 4/00

Democrat ..........................29%..... 29%..... 29%..... 34%
Republican ........................26% .....26% .....31%..... 28%
Independent/Unaffiliated...........41%..... 40% .....39%......33%
Other...............................1% ......1% ......- .......1%
Refused ............................3% ......4%.......1%.......5%

------------

The data are from a very recent study, Invisible Citizens, of student
politics nationwide.  The study was released May 22, 2003 by the
Institute of Politics at Harvard University, based on a national
sample of 1,201 undergraduates.

The full report can be found here:

http://www.iop.harvard.edu/

and is downloadable in PDF format, free of charge.

I hope this answer fully meets your needs, but if anything requires
further elaboration, please let me know through a Request for
Clarification, and I'll be happy to assist you further.

pafalafa-ga


P.S.  I searched quite intensively for data specific to IU (as I'm
sure you have) but no luck!

Bingo. Met our full expectations. The small tip is for finding such
recent data and trying to find the I.U. specific data, which probably
does not exist. Thanks.

Much appreciated!  All the best with your research.

paf