So, the two competing urban legends: all college students love Barack Obama, and Vandy is conservative (competing urban legend: “Vandy is more liberal than you think it is.”). Last week, I administered a political opinion poll for the Vanderbilt Hustler and InsideVandy.com that sent a survey to 590 randomly selected undergraduate students, 241 of whom responded. Here are the full results, but below’s a decent representation of what the data tells us:

• 43% self-identify as Republicans; 35% as Democrats; and 22% as independents which seems contrary to accepted perception of college students in general
• 55% support Barack Obama (including about 17% of Republicans, and about 70% of independents); 38% support McCain; 5% are undecided. Compare that to UPenn, where 81% of the undergraduates support Obama.
• 55% say they will vote by absentee ballot
• Sarah Palin is viewed “Very Unfavorably” by 45% of students (the other candidates all have a plurality of votes around 30-35% as “Favorable”).

A little more conservative than people argue? Perhaps. It would be interesting to have comparative data for how the political affiliations have changed over the past fifteen years as the school has risen in rankings. Also, it would have been awesome to have been doing this all fall to get read on how the campus was trending on the election. Blast!

ETA: I’ve always perceived the campus to be largely moderate with some leaning towards center-right; at the same time, 55% support for Obama is totally not surprising — even just given the t-shirts and buttons on campus this year. Neither political side has much to get worked up about at Vandy, basically.