By: Paul Ji, John Mark Shorack, Katherine Szetu, and Ibis Almada.
“Your vote is your voice. Use it.” was the advice of Rock the Vote. In a democracy, people practice their political rights by voting for the right candidates that represent their beliefs. Just like every individual is unique and different, they utilize their “voice” in different ways. When it comes to how they decide to vote, many factors affect their decision.
For the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election, our group created a mini survey for a small group of people at our school to take. Through the results, we analyzed what makes them make the choices they make according to what they believe.
Our survey brought to light how marital status influences the vote someone casts on the ballot. 70% of our survey takers were not married, and 30% were married. The citizens that were not married had the tendency to lean towards the Independent party even though many believed the Republican party to also be promising. The married citizens we surveyed tended to lean towards the Republicans.
From what we can see, the married percentage tended to vote more based on the morale of the party and what they represented in terms of the life of a person. The individuals tended to look from a broader perspective and also see the foreign policies, and ethics part noticing that none of the two parties really are any good.
In our survey, 60% believed the government should be centralized, yet the other 40% thought it should be decentralized. The importance of the independent identity is that it allows people to move away from the two main parties. In our survey the vast majority that believed in centralization also believed in being Independent. They did not agree with Republicans or Democrats. On the other hand, a majority of Republicans believe in a decentralized government.
After analysing the data we concluded that the amount of income doesn’t necessarily affects political preferences. There were both democrats and republicans in each of the categories. There were even supporters of a third party. However, it was notice that the democrats are supported by two extremes, those who have the highest income and those who don’t even have one.
Each person has a totally different personal background; however through the data it can be infer that people that has experience economic problems supports the Republican Party and voted in Mitt Romney’s favor. In addition, people who were thought to follow their beliefs also support the Republicans more than any other party, although is a little contradicting since people who also follow their believes and those of their family support the Democrats as well.
After looking at the religious affiliation category, we found out that it doesn’t influence the political preference in this specific audience. They are all Christians but support different political parties. 40% supports Romney, 20% supports Dr. Jill Stein, 20% supports Obama and 10% supports Gary Johnson (Liberal Party) Since Republicans are consider to be the conservative group, and the Democrats the liberal one, you would have thought that the group would support Romney, however, the poll demonstrated this to be false, even if the majority does supports Romney.
The majority of the survey takers believed that abortion is wrong; however, there were some people who believed that medical abortion should be allowed, and others who supported “Pro-Choice.” Although most of them did not support abortion, that did not affect who they were voting for president. Some explained that they support Obama because they believe that the availability of contraception will reduce the number of abortions, and Obamacare makes contraception more accessible. Some stated that they supported Romney because of his conservative stance on abortion, that it should be illegal. However, every single Republican did present anti-abortion as one of the main reasons they support the Romney administration.
After looking at the results of the survey, it was indeterminable whether or not gender played a major role in affecting their voting behavior. Although Mitt Romney’s stance on women’s rights is a controversial topic at the moment, it did not seem to affect the female survey takers’ decision for two of them stated that they would vote for Mitt Romney. When asked to explain their reasoning, their major concerns were about what the candidate was trying to achieve on a bigger scale. As for the males, the results did not show any pattern between them due to their gender.
Even out of the small group of survey takers, it was easy to determine that people who support the Republicans are generally conservative while the people who support the Democrats are moderate. Logically, this makes sense because the Republicans are known for being the conservatives who preserve traditions and the customs, while Democrats are known for being more liberal.
After looking into the ethnicities, we found out that neither of the two major ones had only one party they went for. The caucasian people were divided equally between the democratic, republican and independent party. The latinos divided 50% – 50% between the independent and republican party. The Asian is more propense to the democratic party and lastly the Swedish American moves toward the republican side. Ethnicity is also connected to the age and or education a person might have, which will also affect their way of voting.
After analysing the results we notice that self party identification can be influenced by family identification, but that is not always the case. 4 out of 9 survey takers identified themselves with a different party than the one their families did. Therefore we can deduce that voters behavior on this end might not be so obvious all the times, specially with the younger voters.
Voters who were older than 20 were more propense to vote similarly as their family member do, in fact 80% of them feel more identified with the same party as their family. The other 20% have a different party identification. From this category 50% is leaning more to the Republican side, 30% to the Democrats and other 20% towards independent parties. The teens were divided as well. 50% went for the independent party, 25% for the democrats and 25% for the republicans. The older teens were more propense to go to the independent parties while the younger ones chose the democratic or republican.
Education had a small impact on the way our survey takers would vote. 75% of the people who have a Master’s degree from College lean toward the Republican party and the other 25% towards an Independent party. For the people who have a Bachelor’s degree from college their votes were equally divided for the independent, democratic, and republican party. The high school students divided in 50% for independent parties, 25% for republican and 25% for democrats.
After scrutinizing analysis of the result of the survey, we were able to conclude that even within such a small sample group, there were distinct factors that affected certain people’s decisions. However, the research would have been better had we had a bigger group of people to ask from, because although these results revealed what we were trying to prove, it did not provide sufficient data and consistency throughout for us to make a thorough analysis. Nevertheless, we came to a conclusion that every little detail that, although the people deny do not affect their vote, does affect their decision.
U.S. Government Honors. 