October 26, 2020
WCU Polls 1,676 University Students in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education:
58% of Undergraduate Respondents Favor Biden & 31% of Undergraduate Respondents Favor Trump
Pennsylvania is one of nine battleground states that could help determine the outcome
of the 2020 presidential election and college students’ votes in the Commonwealth
are anticipated to play a major role in election results. Designed to capture the
voting intentions and opinions of Pennsylvania college students regarding the upcoming
presidential election, West Chester University’s 2020 Ram Poll surveyed more than
13,000 students attending universities within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher
Education, which enrolls the largest number (80,000+) of Pennsylvania residents among
all four-year colleges and universities in the Commonwealth. The 2020 Ram Poll received
1,676 responses from undergraduate students attending 13 universities within the State
System and 86% of the respondents stated that they will certainly vote or have already
voted. For the upcoming presidential election, 58% of State System undergraduate students
who responded to the survey favor former Vice President Joe Biden (58%) over those
in the survey who favor President Donald Trump (31%).
The poll indicates a slight difference in the candidate of choice between those students who are first-generation college students, as defined by being the first in their family to attend college, and those students who are not the first in their family to attend college. The results of the 2020 Ram Poll indicate that first-generation college students prefer Biden by 23%, while non first-generation students prefer Biden by 28%.
In addition, undergraduate women respondents in the poll preferred Biden to Trump by 40 percentage points (65%-25%). According to the summary findings of the 2020 Ram Poll, “This gap exceeds the gap in the most recent CNN/SSRS Pennsylvania Poll. CNN found a Biden 59%-39% advantage among women. President Trump’s strongest support is among undergraduate men, who still prefer Biden by 6%.”
“The 2016 presidential election shook voters’ faith in election polls,” the report states. “Many forecasters predicted a Clinton win. Combine this with recent rhetoric from candidates about polls being ‘phony’ and ‘unfair,’ and it stands to reason that trust in election polls would be low….When combining the categories ‘A great deal’ and ‘A good amount,’ trust in polls is higher with Democratic students (63%) than Republican students (39%)…”
In addition to the upcoming presidential election, students were asked to rate the job performance for both Governor Tom Wolf and President Donald Trump. In the survey, 46% of respondents rated Wolf’s performance as “excellent” or “good.” In the survey, 56% of respondents rated Trump’s performance as “poor.”
Also of interest, when asked to rate a preference for the Best Convenience Store in Pennsylvania, Sheetz (50%) beat Wawa (34%), with 13% of students liking both stores and 3% liking neither.
Survey findings in the 2020 Ram Poll are based on a web-based, Qualtrics survey conducted between October 12, 2020 and October 18, 2020. Random samples of email addresses from each participating university within the State System were obtained. Students in the sample represent counties in the following regions of the Commonwealth: Allegheny, Philadelphia, Southeast, Northeast, Dutch, West, and Central. The sample excluded out-of-state and international students, as well as any students not of voting age.
The 2020 Ram Poll was conducted by Professor of Statistics Laura Pyott and the following students in WCU’s Department of Mathematics: Kaitlyn Cannon, Sarah Fondots, Shauna Frank, David Glatfelter, Mitchell Griffith, and Tracy Johnson. Professor of Political Science John Kennedy also assisted with the 2020 Ram Poll.