A recent poll conducted by The Dartmouth indicates that the College's faculty and students lean left of the nation as a whole. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean emerged as the frontrunner in a question about a hypothetical presidential election, and President Bush also received strikingly low approval ratings from Dartmouth faculty and students alike.
In national polls, Bush's ratings, while dipping, still remain high, with a recent Gallup poll indicating that his approval ratings stand at 56 percent. On campus, though, 68 percent of respondents said that they hold a generally unfavorable impression of the President and only 22 percent view him favorably.
Faculty and administrators tend to take even more negative views of Bush than do students. While 65 percent of students have an unfavorable view on Bush, only three of the 87 faculty and administrators that responded hold a favorable impression of Bush.
While some of these figures may be ascribed to the larger presence of Democrats on campus, 69 percent of Independents, slightly higher than the average, said that they held an unfavorable impression of Bush.
Less than one percent of respondents who identified themselves as registered Democrats said that they would vote for Bush if the election were held today. However, more than a fifth of Republicans said that they would vote for a candidate other than Bush.
This explains why only 20 percent -- less than the total percentage of Republicans -- of all respondents said that they would vote for Bush. Howard Dean was the clear frontrunner, with 30 percent saying they would vote for him.
Among the Democrats, John Kerry and Wesley Clark were in a dead heat, with nine percent each indicating them as their choice for president.
In the upcoming Democratic primaries, Dean was still the preferred candidate by far, but Clark moved up one percentage point, indicating that Kerry has greater cross-party support.
The remaining candidates in order of votes, all less than five percent, were Joseph Lieberman, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton both tied for sixth place, followed by Dick Gephardt and Carol Moseley Braun.
While students often complain about apathy on campus, especially compared to schools such as Brown and Berkeley that have large activist populations, the poll suggests that impression may not be entirely valid. Ninety-four percent of the people who responded said that they were very likely or likely to vote in the 2004 presidential elections.
Furthermore, a full 83 percent of respondents claimed they were registered to vote and 60 percent are even members of one of the two main parties -- 42 percent are Democrats, 18 percent are Republicans, while the rest are unaffiliated or are affiliated with parties like the Greens or the Libertarians.
The poll was sent out via blitz to the entire student body, as well as faculty and administrators. A total of 909 responses were received, 822 of which were submitted by students.
