The 2024 presidential general elections are set to begin in just under six months. To understand how Emory University students feel about the election, The Emory Wheel conducted a poll surveying undergraduate students on their political ideologies, voting plans and sentiments toward former U.S. President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden’s administrations. In total, 86 students responded to the survey, accounting for about 1% of the undergraduate student population.
The survey collected results from 31 first-year students, 21 sophomores, 27 juniors and seven seniors. Of the 86 students surveyed, 59 (68.6%) identified as Democrats, seven (8.1%) identified as Republicans and 15 (17.4%) identified as independents. Five (5.8%) students identified as “other.”
(Hayley Powers/Senior Staff Illustrator)
The Wheel sent the survey to class GroupMe chats and attempted to avoid sampling bias by asking students in common gathering spaces on campus, such as Asbury Circle, to complete the survey. However, the survey does not account for response bias and random sampling was not used.
Although Associate Professor of Political Science Zachary Peskowitz noted that it is difficult to make generalizations from the results of the Wheel’s survey due to the sample size and representation, he said voting trends observed in studies with larger, more indicative and randomized samples mirror the results of the Wheel’s survey.
“It’s useful to look at these broader national polls of young adults and to see some trends in them,” Peskowitz said. “‘In what ways are Emory students different from the broader national population of college students?’ I think is an interesting and important question.”
Peskowitz said that the disproportionate support for the Democratic Party among Emory students reflects common voter behavior among students pursuing higher education.
“There are lots of larger surveys that do spend a lot of effort to try to make themselves more representative of the young American population,” Peskowitz said. “In general, they find that young adults in that age cohort tend to be more liberal, tend to vote more democratically than older Americans. Some of the patterns in the survey are borne out in nationally representative data focused on a similar age profile demographic.”
The majority of residents in DeKalb County have voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 1988.
Associate Professor of Political Science Bernard Fraga added that an important takeaway from the Wheel’s survey is that students who identified as Democrats were largely unanimous in their dissatisfaction with the Trump administration. Of the Democratic students, none indicated neutrality or approval of the Trump administration.
“We can see that while there’s a lot of dissatisfaction among self-identified Democrats and liberals in the survey, they strongly indicate that they would be more dissatisfied with if Trump was still in power,” Fraga said.
When asked to describe their satisfaction with the Biden administration, approximately 38.4% of survey respondents reported that they were satisfied in some form, 9.3% selected that they felt neutral toward the administration and 52.3% indicated dissatisfaction to some degree.
This reported dissatisfaction follows a national trend present among U.S. college students for the past several years. In a 2022 NBC study including 1,077 Class of 2025 undergraduates nationwide, 42% of participants approved of Biden’s handling of the presidency, while 57% disapproved.
According to Fraga, party disillusionment seems to be prevalent among Democratic voters.
“In recent months, national polls have consistently shown significant dissatisfaction with the Biden administration among Democrats, which is interesting because generally, Democrats favor their party,” Fraga said.
Ayla Khan (she/her, 25C) is from Nashville, Tennessee, majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology, and minoring in political science on a pre-med track. Outside of the Wheel, Khan serves as a Third-Year Legislator for the 68th College Council, and is a committee member for TableTalk. In her free time, you can find her exploring Atlanta with her friends, watching Gilmore Girls, or listening to either Drake or Led Zeppelin.
