The real ballots will not be counted until tomorrow, but according to The Herald poll conducted last week, 86.1 percent of Brown students support Sen. Barack Obama, while 6.3 percent support Sen. John McCain. Most students interviewed by The Herald said they expected Obama to come out on top in the Herald polls, though the difference was larger than they anticipated.
"It sounds high, but not surprising," Emanuel Buzek '12 said.
The numbers did not surprise Max Chaiken '09, deputy field officer for the Rhode Island for Obama campaign and president of Brown Students for Barack Obama, though he said he thinks the number of Brown students voting for Obama is even higher than the poll reflected. He said Brown students are "overwhelmingly rational," and even if they may not typically vote Democrat, they "recognize that McCain is offering more of the same."
"This is certainly not the case nationally," he added. "The race is still close."
Wendy Schiller, associate professor of political science and public policy, said she thought Obama would be more popular than McCain among students, but "the ratio was really large."
"Even for Brown, that seems to be very high," she said.
Based on the numbers, she said she thinks some students who define themselves as moderate and Republican are voting Democrat this year.
Sean Quigley '10, president of the College Republicans and a Herald opinions columnist, called 2008 "a strange year in regard to how people seem to be voting."
He said he knows of students who do not necessarily support the Democratic Party, but "dislike the current leadership enough" to vote for Obama.
"Maybe the number would have been smaller with a different Democrat," he said.
Poll respondents also indicated their voter registration status - 72.6 percent of students are registered in another state and 13.6 percent are registered to vote in Rhode Island. Of the students polled, 8.6 percent are not eligible to vote and 5.1 percent are not registered.
"I was not surprised to see that such a huge percentage of students were voting in their home state," Schiller said. "Typically, that's true of college students."
But Rhode Island's outcome "is not going to be pivotal," she said. Students originally from swing states like New Mexico and Ohio "really want to make sure (they) vote there."
The poll also asked about student involvement in presidential campaigns: 5.7 percent of students volunteered in Rhode Island, 9.6 percent volunteered in another state and 13.7 percent gave money to a campaign.
The overwhelming majority - 74.7 percent - did not volunteer or give money. Although the question instructed poll-takers to circle one choice, some respondents indicated they did more than one of the options. In those cases, The Herald counted all the responses.
"It surprises me that such a low percentage of students have volunteered for a campaign," Haley Jordahl '11 said. "I feel like I know so many students who have gone to New Hampshire."
Schiller said the volunteer statistics might appear lower in reality than the common assumption about Brown students and politics. "People can be very intensely interested, but decide not to spend their volunteer time on that," she said. "Brown students are busy kids."
Quigley said he thought 74 percent seemed like a high figure for students not involved in any capacity, but said even within the College Republicans, "there aren't that many people working on campaigns."
"People are focusing more on academic matters than purely political matters," he said.
Chaiken, on the other hand, posited that many students fall under the "all three" category - volunteering in Rhode Island, volunteering in another state and donating money - which was not an option on the poll sheet.
"Students are ready and willing to work hard to make this happen," he said.
Regardless of participation in campaigns, Schiller said students are more aware of this election than others she has witnessed while at Brown.
Interest in this election stems from the potential landmark of an African-American president and the impact of this election on party politics, she said.
"This is their moment to affect their future and their political life," she said.
The Herald poll was conducted Oct. 27 and Oct. 28 and has a 3.6 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence.
A total of 649 Brown undergraduates completed the poll, which was administered as a written questionnaire to students in the University Post Office at J. Walter Wilson, outside the Blue Room in Faunce House and in the Sciences Library.
