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WKU Survey Reveals Political October 31, 2003 The WKU Survey of Political Attitudes, conducted by Dr. Scott Lasley's Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior class, measured levels of political participation, levels of political knowledge and political preferences among students and faculty. Among the differences of opinion: *Faculty disapproved of the job President Bush is doing while students give the president high marks. *In the race for Kentucky governor, students prefer Republican Ernie Fletcher while faculty prefer Democrat Ben Chandler. *Students also think media are too liberal while faculty think media are too conservative. "Although one must be cautious in interpreting the faculty data, the differences are consistent with expectations," Dr. Lasley said. "Since most students are from Kentucky, you would expect that political attitudes would be similar to those held be Kentuckians at large. The faculty numbers are consistent with national trends that indicate that faculty are more liberal than the general public. "Although the differences between faculty and students are interesting, the findings reflecting political knowledge and participation are more significant." The survey revealed that while most students volunteer for charitable activities and nonprofit organizations, smaller percentages participate in political activities and many aren't that interested in the political process. Less than half the students surveyed discuss politics on a daily or weekly basis. Students, like most Americans, get their political information from television than newspapers or magazines. More students were able to name Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor-elect of California than were able to name the vice president of the United States or the governor of Kentucky. "This can serve as challenge to the University and Department of Political Science to find ways to reach out to students outside of the classroom and find ways to make politics more interesting and accessible," Dr. Lasley said. "The fact that almost 90 percent of students are able to identify Arnold Schwarzenegger as the newly elected governor of California suggests students can retain political information if they find it interesting," he said. Among the survey results: Percentage of students who correctly named the following: governor-elect of California, 89%; state that had recall election, 82%; vice president of United States, 65%; majority party in U.S. House, 65%; governor of Kentucky, 63%; majority party in U.S. Senate, 47%; prime minister of Great Britain, 46%; length of terms in U.S. House, 40%; U.S. secretary of state, 36%; both candidates for Kentucky governor, 32%; number of U.S. Supreme Court justices, 25%; chief justice of Supreme Court, 8%; speaker of U.S. House, 8%. Chandler: 41.7% - 51.5% Republican: 40.5% - 21.1% Overall job as president: 74.0% - 27.5%
Too conservative: 12.7% - 38.9% The survey was based on telephone interviews of students and mail surveys of full-time faculty at WKU and Bowling Green Community College. Interviews were conducted with 281 students from Oct. 9-23 while 40 faculty had returned surveys as of Oct. 27. The margin of error is approximately plus or minus 5.5 percentage points. Additional results and analysis will be available on the project website at: www.wku.edu/politicalsurvey For more information, contact Scott Lasley at (270) 745-2799. More WKU news is available on the World Wide Web at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via E-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
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