This article was co-written by Kendall Carll, Naomi Corlette, Rachael Dziaba, Aidan Scully, and Kira Tian. Data visualizations by Lucy Ding and Vivian Nguyen.
As part of the Fall 2022 Campus Poll series this semester, the Harvard Political Review seeks to understand the views of Harvard undergraduates on a variety of political topics, from campus politics to cultural issues to national policy. This is the second of five biweekly polls to assess the change in students’ views over the course of the semester. You can view the recaps of Week One here and Week Two here.
Week Three of the Harvard Political Review’s Fall 2022 Campus Poll was conducted online via Qualtrics from Oct. 17, 2022 to Oct. 22, 2022 among the 266 valid and late respondents to the Week One poll. Unfinished, duplicate, and late responses were invalidated and excluded from the final analysis, leaving 99 valid responses for a 37.2% valid response rate.
The following is a digest version of the poll results, featuring some of the most noteworthy data points as determined by our writers.
61% of students support race-conscious admissions
On Oct. 31, the Supreme Court will hear two cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and University of North Carolina for their use of affirmative action in admissions. With a 6 to 3 conservative majority, the Court will likely rule that using race as a factor in admissions is unconstitutional, overturning the contentious precedent that established affirmative action as legal in the 1970s. While a Washington Post poll found that over 60% of Americans support banning the consideration of race in admissions, conversely, over 60% of Harvard College respondents support Harvard’s race-conscious policies, and only around 19% either disagreed or strongly disagreed with this sentiment.
This stark divergence between national public opinion and Harvard student opinion is especially salient as all students at the university have been directly impacted by the admissions policies in question. Though SFFA has charged that Asian and White applicants are disadvantaged by race-conscious policies, Asian and non-Hispanic White respondents showed majority support for the policy, at 58% and 59% respectively. Among the remaining respondents, 69% supported the policy. Furthermore, while the majority of students were in favor of this particular Harvard policy, this does not indicate a broader acceptance of the administration, as almost half of students (49%) felt neutrally about the job performance of the Harvard Administration and another 32% indicated disapproval.
89% of students want greater focus on local politics
There was one question that students were uniquely in agreement on: the importance of local politics. When asked if local politics deserves more attention than it currently receives, 41% of students said they strongly agreed and 47% said they agreed. A mere 3% of the student respondents disagreed with the statement.
With the nation’s political focus on midterms in November, student emphasis on local politics seems salient. Local elections have notoriously scattered dates — few of which align with national election cycles — so engagement in national elections would not necessarily translate to engagement in local elections. It is then not because of, but despite, the midterms that students are looking to the local, not the national.
These results also run counter to the empirical reality of local election turnout. While a presidential election will bring out roughly 60% of the electorate, local election turnout sits around an optimistic 20% — a gap even more pronounced among young, urban voter groups (i.e., college students near Boston). Student opinions might provide a counterweight to lackluster engagement on the local level. With the conviction that local elections are undervalued being so pervasive among Harvard undergraduates, a broader shift towards denationalized politics that works more effectively at the ground level is plausible.
The widely-held support for local political engagement might serve as an opportunity for both parties, signaling strengthened desire for good candidates and effective campaigns in lower-stakes races. If demand for local politics grows towards the level indicated by the polling data, parties should be expected to engage in more competitive campaigns on the local level.
74% can respect someone with differing political views, 19% feel isolated politically
When asked whether they have faith in American democracy, 49% of the surveyed student body agreed with the statement, 18% felt neutral, while 33% disagreed or strongly disagreed. However, when asked whether they believe America is headed in the right direction, only 15% agreed or strongly agreed while over 50% disagreed or strongly disagreed. While the two results seem contradictory, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive due to the distinction between whether the question deals with the concept or the implementation of “American democracy.” The majority of students express confidence in the idea of American democracy, but do not approve of how it is currently run and of those running it.
One reason for students’ overwhelmingly pessimistic view on America’s future could surround media and misinformation: news outlets often include click-bait titles that disproportionately highlight certain aspects of the country’s problems to attract readers, resulting in inaccurate representations of the country’s progress in improving its current democracy. Though students express such pessimism, the data shows that the Harvard community showed a high degree of tolerance on political issues.
When asked whether they can respect someone who opposes their political views, over 70% agreed and only 9% of students disagreed. And when asked whether they feel isolated on campus due to political opinion, 69% disagreed and 12% felt neutral. These numbers indicate a sense of political inclusivity among the student body, but it is important to consider that even though the poll is anonymous, a certain social desirability bias may be at play, and students may be more likely to say they would respect someone with differing views than they would be to respect that person in practice.
Conclusion
This week’s results contextualize the political pessimism found in previous polls; though that pessimism continues to manifest in low rates of support for the country’s current direction, students largely responded that they can respect those who hold differing political views and that they do not feel isolated for their politics on campus. This mirrors a similar gap between high support for administrative policies and low support for the administration itself; broader perspectives toward large institutions do not necessarily predict, and may even directly oppose, perspectives on the local and individual manifestations of those institutions and their consequences.
Every other week throughout the semester, the HPR will seek to bring light to shifting opinions on campus concerning a wide range of political and cultural issues, as well as gauge the student body’s thoughts on current events such as these.
Image by Swathi Kella created for use by Harvard Political Review.
