In battleground Pennsylvania, West Chester University students poll their peers on 2024 election
In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, polls show Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is in a tight race with former President Donald Trump with now less than a week until Election Day.
At West Chester University, a state university about an hour from Philadelphia, students are doing their part to stay engaged this election season. Students in Professor Laura Pyott's "Statistical Methods for Political Polling" course recently polled their peers about the issues most important to them in the race.
"I want them to think critically about what they are seeing. Understand the methodology behind the results they are seeing," Pyott said.
Pyott created the class following the 2016 presidential election, where Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote.
There was a widespread national conversation after the race about how polls, which showed Clinton leading and predicted her the likely winner, underestimated Trump's level of support.
"People were confused about how to interpret them correctly," Pyott said.
Pyott and her students conducted their own poll. They sent out more than 20,000 surveys to students at West Chester and other universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.
The survey asked respondents how they were going to vote, and what issues were important to them in the race.
In total, 1,048 respondents completed the survey for a response rate of around 5%. You can read all about what they found on West Chester University's website.
After respondents who said they "do not know" who they were voting for were challenged to pick a candidate, the results stood at 62% for Harris, 33% for Trump and 3% other, with 2% remaining undecided. The same poll conducted in 2020 found Biden leading Trump 58% to 31%.
"It's really eye-opening, with Pennsylvania being such a battleground state, to see how students in this next generation and how young voters see this election," said Michael Thais, a student studying economics and statistics.
His classmate Molly Groff agrees.
"It's made me more vested in doing my own research and thinking more critically about what to look for in an election," Groff said.
This will be Thais and Groff's first time voting in a presidential election. Ezana Rivers, who has voted before, says she's really enjoyed picking apart the data they've collected.
"Understanding the importance of the margin of error in an election poll and understanding why some people are leaning towards other ways," Rivers said.
The students' surveys rated education, abortion and the economy as the most important issues when selecting the next president.
The students who were eligible to take the survey had to be 18 years old or older and must be a Pennsylvania resident.
Pyott offers her class every other fall to run the same time as federal elections.
