Though Temple is in the heart of a highly Democratic area, Pennsylvania as a whole is a heavily courted battleground state that both candidates want on their side when this election ends.
A recent poll by CBS News, UWIRE and the Chronicle of Higher Education looked at a representative sample of college students from Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and Colorado. Temple was polled as the representative school for Pennsylvania.
Students in the battleground states have much in common. About half of the students polled said they are paying a lot of attention to the election. Pennsylvania ranked the lowest with 47 percent of students reporting they are paying attention, while Colorado ranked the highest with 58 percent.
Six in 10 participants favor Sen. Barack Obama as their candidate of choice. Of Temple students polled, 80.6 percent of said the Obama/Biden ticket is their choice, while 15.6 percent said they prefer the McCain/Palin ticket.
The effort to get students registered to vote has paid off. The poll of Temple students showed that 93 percent were registered, and about half of the registered students reported this will be the first time they are casting a ballot.
Even though the streets of campus has been dotted with clipboard-wielding volunteers urging students to register, only half of students reported being contacted by a campaign directly urging them to register.
Even though more than 90 percent of Temple students surveyed are registered to vote, only 85 percent of those registered said they will definitely be voting. Two percent of registered voters reported they will probably or definitely not vote today.
A 65.4 percent majority of Temple students polled reported that their parents will be voting for the same candidate, and 6.1 percent, said their parents will not be voting at all this election season.
In terms of whether or not students feel they can relate to a candidate, 75.1 percent of students said they can relate to Obama, while only 14.2 percent of students polled reported being able to relate to McCain.
The top hot topics for Temple students are the cost of higher education and the war in Iraq.
LeAnne Matlach can be reached at leannematlach@temple.edu.
mccain has a grandma who died too. she wants to see mccain elected
too. she’s dead even longer than obama’s grandma and waiting to see
her grandson elected longer than obama’s grandma. so elect mccain
first. elect obama second, and, after he serve the country or someone
besides himself.
obama has the time to run as many times as he wants. let mccain who
was 22yrs in uniform 51/2yrs pow an old man get elected first or
he’ll never get elected. if mccain, like obama, never waste time on
the country and just use all his time to run for offices -mccain
would be president 3terms already. obama can serve first and re run.
the way obama announce her death is like elect me because of my
grandma.