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clarion.brevard.edu
Volume 84, Issue 10 Web Edition
SERVING BREVARD COLLEGE SINCE 1935
November 7, 2018
Midterm election poll results
Respondents preferred Democrats in campus-wide opinion survey
By John Padgett
Contributor
By a more than 4-to-l margin, Brevard College faculty and statf said
they preferred Democrats in this year’s midterm election.
For students, however, it was a much more mixed bag, with Democrats
edging out Republicans by a slight margin.
These were among some of the results from the Clarion’s 2018 midterm
election poll, which garnered 103 responses from students, staff and
faculty starting Friday morning until around noon yesterday. Because of
the limited number of responses, the poll has a margin of error of plus or
minus 9 percent, and so the results may not accurately represent how the
majority of people at the college truly feel.
Even so, the responses we did receive suggest that students (and people
under the age of 25 in general) differ significantly from BC faculty and
staff in their outlook on American politics in this year’s election.
Just under half of the respondents, 47, were BC students. When asked
who they were voting for in the election—Republicans, Democrats, or
some mix between the two—17 students responded “all or nearly all
Republicans” while 14 said “all or nearly all Democrats.” Flowever, nine
Polittcai Paitv Vote Allocation
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students said they had voted for a mix but with more Democrats, while
two others reported voting for a mix but with more Republicans.
When all their responses are added together, students said they preferred
some mix of Democratic candidates over Republicans 23 to 19.
For faculty and staff, the breakdown was much starker: 39 said they
preferred “all or nearly all Democrats,” while just eight said the same for
Republicans. For those choosing some mix of the two parties, eight gave
an edge to more Democrats and six to a mix with more Republicans.
Only three people—two students and one faculty or staff member—said
their choices were a nearly equal balance between the two parties.
Respondents were asked also to rate issues that were factors in their votes
choices. The biggest factor had to do with health care, with 59 respondents
calling it “extremely important” and 25 more calling it a “key” factor.
Two other issues respondents called “extremely important” were character
issues (for 56 respondents) and civil rights (for 54 respondents). Both of
these issues were a key factor for another 30 of those responding to the poll.
Read more about The Clarion’s opinion poll responses and about
actual midterm election results in next week’s issue.
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