College is meant to be a time when students are exposed to new ways of thinking and begin developing their own opinions on important matters. Results from the Pack Poll, however, suggest most students owe their opinions to their parents.
According to the poll, 80 percent of students who have two Republican parents also identify themselves as Republican. If both parents are Democrats, then a whopping 91 percent of students are self-identified Democrats. Interestingly, students were more likely to “defect” from their parent’s party identification if both parents were Republicans. We find that 16 percent of students with two Republican parents call themselves Democrats, but just 4 percent of students with two Democratic parents call themselves Republicans. The higher percentage of students who become Democrats compared to their parents’ party identification might be attributed to the perceived liberal atmosphere of a college campus.
Beyond these effects on students’ partisanship, parental influence appears to affect their opinions on the issues. We asked students, for example, whether they favored or opposed the recently passed health care reform bill. Overall, 34 percent said they favored the legislation, 44 percent were opposed, and the rest had no opinion. Yet, 69 percent of students with one or more Democratic parents and no Republican parents said they were in favor of the reform bill. Conversely, 65 percent of students with one or more Republican parents and no Democratic ones opposed the bill. This pattern is repeated for almost every issue we asked about, including feeling about legalizing gay marriage, the war in Afghanistan and the legalization of marijuana.
We also investigated this relationship directly by asking students what they believed to be their parents’ opinions on the issues. On health care, 93 percent of students who reported strongly favoring the reform bill said their mother supported the bill too. All but 4 percent of students who said they strongly opposed the bill thought their mother favored the bill. Our results for students’ fathers’ opinion were very similar, though not quite as determinant as their mothers’.
We find a majority of students following in their parents’ footsteps as they make voting decisions in 2010. According to the Pack Poll survey, 69 percent of students with two Republican parents will be voting for Richard Burr, and 64 percent of students with two Democratic parents will be voting for Elaine Marshall. Likewise, 73 percent of students with two Republican parents plan to vote for a Republican for the State House, while 83 percent with two Democratic parents plan to vote for a Democrat.
Overall, these results indicate many students have yet to develop opinions about politics that are independent from their parents’. Of course, students shouldn’t be expected to always deviate from their parents’ views, but certainly many expect to see greater independence than this.
Wes Householder is a senior in political science and is in Michael Cobb’s Public Opinion and the Media in American Politics class. Householder worked with the class to develop and release a poll to test students’ opinions on the election and their political feelings. Of 4,000 surveys released, 1,149 responded and the margin of error was plus or minus 2.9 percent. Please send your thoughts about parental effects on voting to letters@technicianonline.com.
