Collegiate Times

Of the 870 students who participated in Mock the Vote, 523 said they would vote for Barack Obama. That is, 60 percent of those who responded support the Democratic presidential candidate.

This mock election conducted by the Political Science Club at Virginia Tech provides some idea of the political atmosphere at the university.  

As for the Republican candidate John McCain, 302 -- or 35 percent of respondents -- said they would vote for him. 18 people said they would vote for Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party, 11 chose Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, nine would vote for Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party, and seven people had no answer.

These statistics correlated with the stated political ideology of the respondents. The most commonly chosen two categories were somewhat liberal, which 257 or 30 percent of people claimed to be, and moderate, which was chosen by 232 or 27 percent of respondents. The least popular answers to this question was very conservative, an answer with which 56 or 6 percent of people agreed. More respondents, 99 or 11 percent, claimed to be very liberal.

Although the number of respondents was nowhere close to the amount of students, faculty and staff at Virginia Tech, Political Science professor Craig Brians said it allows for examination of trends.

"You can see what are the characteristics of people who fall into this category or that category," Brians said. "But you do have to be careful in terms of saying that it's representative of some larger group."

Brians said that it's more difficult for the sample to be representative of the entire population when that sample is self-selected, as it was in this case. A self-selected sample includes only those people who are interested in responding.

Political Science Club President Nick Snider said members of the club advertised heavily for the survey by creating a Facebook group, visiting classes to raise awareness for the mock election, and even providing computers on the first floor of Squires where people could easily take the survey.

But Snider said many students refused to stop and take the online survey, which could be completed in under a minute.

"People have been hassled all year," Snider said, referring to the get-out-the-vote campaigns that ended the first week of October. "I think kids actually got tired of hearing about the election."

Although Snider said he was disappointed in the low turnout, since the club's goal was 12,000 respondents, PSC Vice-President Trevon Talbot said it was a greater turnout than what the organization saw for the last mock election. This last survey was taken last year for the presidential primaries and had 700 respondents.

Talbot said the mock election was PSC's way of getting out the vote.

"It's not only that we do it just to see what the campus is looking like, who they're voting for, which way they're leaning," Talbot said. "We also want to encourage people to vote during the actual election. It kind of gives them an idea of what it's going to be like voting and how much of an impact they can have."

Snider stated that since PSC is a non-partisan political organization, it's good for the club to be the one to put on a mock election.

"A lot of the members are curious of what the student body thinks about politics and the election just because most of us are political science majors," Snider said.

Brians, who is scheduled to help analyze the survey data according to Snider, said the mock election is a way to keep track of political patterns within the Tech community. Every year, the data can show any changing political trends among students, faculty, and staff.

Snider said there would be another mock election next year, when governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, among other positions, will be up for grabs in Virginia.