With the Presidential Election in full swing and with Lynn University hosting the third and final debate of the election season, researchers wanted to know how students at Lynn University planned to vote in the upcoming election.During any campaign season, many polls are conducted about the candidates’ relative strength among a certain block of voters. Of particular interest to the 2012 Presidential election were the newly minted college age voters. These are voters who are eligible to vote for the first time in a national election. Additionally, they represent the first generation of voters who grew up with the Internet and Social Media. Many studies have shown that social media did play an important role in the developing the opinions of this generation of new voters. However, the reports are unclear as to exactly how. The results of this survey offer some surprising conclusions.

This paper attempts to shed some light on whether or not social media had a direct impact on the votes of Lynn University students. Specifically, we chose to poll students who were at least voting age, meaning ages 18 years old or greater. While it is acknowledged in advance this will inherently bias the work, this selection bias based on surveying out of convenience was necessary to find a pattern in the data. While more sample survey questions, a bigger sample size, or a more varied sample space might give a better picture of how the election would go, this was not the intention of this survey. Instead, the purpose was to find the opinions of a select group of Lynn University students.

I chose a sample size of 30 for my survey. This sample was representative of the overall population of Lynn University, although it only represents 1.3% of the total population. It was discovered that most polls use a 5% confidence interval. With that in mind, we wanted to find a representative sample of the total American population at Lynn University. The total population was approximately 1800 students of the total 2400 who attend Lynn University. Based on these numbers, we determined that our polling size to achieve a 95% confidence level and a confidence interval of ± 3.5 needed to be 30 samples. Thus, 30 sample surveys were collected.

I sampled 30 different students to find their opinions on the upcoming election.  My sample survey has 11 questions. The first 7 questions are qualitative and the last 4 are quantitative questions. The qualitative questions asked about gender, class rank, college major, the number of registered voters, party affiliation, percentage of votes for each candidate, and likeliness of voting or not voting. The quantitative questions asked about the average income, amount of hours spent watching political news on T.V, surfing the Internet on political news, and following news on different types of social media. I would like to explain firstly on the qualitative data.

According to the first qualitative question on the survey, 19 were male (63.3%) while 10 (30%) Female. One student (6.7%) identified as “other” whatever that might mean to this particular student.

Slide 6

 Additionally, none were freshman. 15 students (50%) were sophomore, 14 students  (46.7%) were juniors, and one student (3.3%) was a senior. No other classes were surveyed.

Thirdly, the next qualitative question is the type of study the individual would want to major in.  The highest percentage was Business Management, (30%), then Sports Management, (17%), and then Public Relations, (13%). These four different types of study such as Journalism/Communications, American Studies, Psychology, and Computer Animation fall as 7%. Also, Education, Gynecology, and Film fall as 3%.

In the fourth question the survey had measured the number of registered voters versus non-registered voters. All 30 students replied; the results were 21 registered and 10 non-registered. There are a total of 207,643,594 voters in the USA.

The fifth question had focused on the party affiliation. The Republican Party had the highest total with 11 and the libertarian had the least with two. Based on the survey only 5 of the participates posted that they were affiliated with the Democratic Party. Based on the following questions Obama was able to capture more of the independent and no party votes from Romney.

The sixth question had asked on the amount of votes for each candidate. According to the pie chart, Obama had the highest total with 54% and Romney had the second highest with 43$. Based on the survey only 3% of the participates posted that they would vote for Gary Johnson. The percentage of the participates who chose other was 0%.

The last qualitative question had inquired on the likeliness of voting or not voting. According to the pie chart, 40% of students were very likely to vote, 20% of students were very unlikely to vote, and 17% of students were likely to vote. Based on the survey the two lowest totals were neither likely nor unlikely and likely. 13% of students had chose they were neither likely nor unlikely to vote. Also, 10% of students had chose they were unlikely to vote.

The eighth question is the average an individual’s parents make. Based on the results of the survey, the majority of people who I surveyed (14 people) had chose that their parents’ income is $100,000 or over. 6 people had chose that their parents’ income is between $25,000 and $50,000. 4 people had chose unknown as their answer. Another 4 people had chose that their parents’ income is between $75,000 and $100,000 dollars. The two lowest totals were average incomes of under $25,000 and between $50,000 and $75,000. 1 person had chose under 25,000 and another 1 person chose between $50,000 and $75,000 as their parent’s average income.

^{The ninth question focused on the amount of hours spent watching political news on T.V. According to the survey, 18 people had chose that they spend less than an hour watching political news on T.V, which is the highest total. 7 people had chose that they spend between 1 to 2 hours watching political news on T.V. 3 people had chose that they spend between 3 to 4 hours watching political news on T.V. The three lowest totals were between 2 to 3 hours, unknown, and more than 4 hours of watching political news on T.V. 1 person had chose between 2 to 3 hours, 1 person had chose unknown, and no one had chose over 4 hours.}

^{The tenth question had asked the amount of hours spend surfing the Internet on political news. Based on the survey, the highest total of the amount of hours spend on the Internet was under an hour. The majority, 22 people, spends less than 60 minutes on looking up political news and information on the Internet. 5 people had chose that they spend between 1 to 2 hours on the Internet looking up political news. 2 people spend between 2 and 3 hours surfing the Internet on political news. 1 person spends between 3 to 4 hours surfing the Internet on political news. No one had chose over 4 hours of surfing the Internet on political news.}

The last quantitative and final question is the amount of hours following news on social media. According to the survey, 22 students spend less than an hour following news on social media, which is the highest score. 4 students spend 1 to 2 hours following news on social media. 1 student chose 3 to 4 hours on social media. The two lowest totals were between 2 to 3 and over 4 hours of following news on social media. No one had chose 2 to 3 or over 4 hours following news on social media as their answer for the question.