Hamilton Students Support Obama

By Tamim Akiki, Yoshihiko Kubota, and Xiyue Li

Barack Obama garnered 55.6% support as the most likely candidate to win the presidential election from the 409 Hamilton students who participated in an online survey conducted prior to Super Tuesday. This percentage far exceeds those of John McCain and Hilary Clinton, who received 22.3% and 21.8% support respectively. 

The population who took the survey identified themselves as 55% Democratic, 13.2% Republican, and 23.7% Independent. Caucasians made up 87.8%, Black/African Americans 2.0%, Latino/Latina/Hispanic 2.0%, Asians 3.9%, Native Americans 0.5%, and 3.9% other. Males consisted of 46.9% and females 53.1%. Interest in the primaries was high, as 93% of respondents felt at least somewhat acquainted with the issues, including 40% who considered themselves to be well acquainted.

The qualities most important in the decision to vote in the primaries were the candidates’ position on important issues (93% considered it very important), the candidates’ personal integrity (73%) and the candidates’ experience (33.7%). The candidates’ political party was not considered to be of major importance, and support for Obama was prevalent throughout the student population: 59.5% of self-identified Democrats, 46.3% Independents, and even 40% of Republicans supported him over the other candidates. The support from self-identified Republicans was most surprising as Obama came within 5 votes of beating the Republican candidate, John McCain. Also, while the focus of the Democratic primaries has been at times shifted to one of Female candidate vs African American candidate, there was no significant correlation between support for Obama or Clinton with race or gender. The great majority of respondents felt that the United States is ready for either a female or a black president. Further, 90% of respondents felt that Obama will perform as President better than the current President. This percentage compares with 81% for Hilary Clinton, 81% for John McCain, 28% for Mike Huckabee, and 24% for Mike Gravel.

As for issues concerning the primaries, only 10% of respondents believe the Bush tax cuts should be permanent for all, while 75% believe there should either be a path for illegal immigrants to citizenship or a guest worker program, and 60.1% support federally mandated universal healthcare coverage. There was no correlation between the respondents’ opinion on these issues with the candidate they support. However, there was a slight difference in the issues of most importance amongst respondents supporting each candidate. The top three issues Obama supporters care about were the Iraq war, environment, and the economy; McCain supporters the Iraq war, economy, and taxes; Clinton supporters the Iraq war, economy, and health care; and Huckabee supporters the Iraq war, health care, and abortion.