Author: Angel Eyes

I’ve been doing some research on college students and politics for my political action committee (and wrote up a post for our blog here)–since I don’t know enough to contribute much to the discussions about redistricting, I thought I’d share what I’ve found. Maybe this is just pointless demographic trivia, but bear with me…

The district with the most college and graduate students – by far – is Mike Capuano’s MA-08, which includes Harvard, MIT, and Tufts, to name a couple schools. College students make up 16.9% of the district; in no other district are they more than 14.3%.

The only other district with more than 100,000 college students is Jason Chaffetz’s UT-03, which is expansive enough to include both Utah State Utah Valley University and BYU. Since UT-03 has been growing so rapidly, though, it ranks only 12th in the proportion of residents who are college students.

10 of the 25 districts with the most college students (as a percentage of residents) are represented by Republicans. Chaffetz’s district is the only one among these that is totally hopeless for Democrats, although now that Chet Edwards is gone TX-17 probably falls into that category.

8 of the 10 districts with the fewest college students are represented by Republicans. Nine of those are in the Sun Belt; the district with the 10th fewest, Bill Shuster’s PA-09, is the northern district with the fewest students. Gene Green is the Democrat representing the fewest college students, and Scott DesJarlais has the very fewest college constituents.

Not surprisingly, Republicans are much more likely to represent young people than college students. They hold 8 of the 10 districts with the largest proportion of 15-24 year-olds.

I’d started this project because I was curious about the districts of a couple of candidates that my political action committee had endorsed, only to watch them lose heartbreaking races. I figured that Mary Jo Kilroy and Tom Perriello–representing OSU and UVA–would figure high on the list. But it turns out that Kilroy’s OH-15 is only 19th, while Perriello’s VA-05 is all the way down at 136th. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the dropoff in college turnout didn’t contribute to their defeats. Anecdotally, at least, I’ve heard that UVA’s turnout was terrible in 2010.

In any case: I’ll be interested to see where some of these student populations end up after redistricting, since campuses are convenient blocs of low-leverage voters who can be shuffled around districts.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that my source is the American Communities Survey, available online here: http://fastfacts.census.gov/ho…

Hi folks,

I’m looking for help finding some demographic information about congressional districts. I work with a student-run political action committee (www.snappac.org) and I’m doing a little bit of research on students and politics to help us with our 2012 targeting. I was curious to know which districts have the most high school and college students (though obviously the answer will change after redistricting). The American Community Survey has estimates of the numbers of college/graduate students and high school students in each district, but I can’t find a way to access it in convenient fashion. Instead, I have to go to fastfacts.census.gov and look up each district one at a time.

Anybody know where I could see this information all in one spreadsheet? Or an otherwise sortable format?

P.S. While doing this research, I stumbled on an interesting piece of trivia – the three largest college campuses (at least according to Wikipedia) are all currently represented by freshman Republicans. Pretty vivid illustration of the total disappearance of young voters in midterm elections. Mary Jo Kilroy and (especially) Tom Perriello also come to mind as candidates who suffered from the decline of the university vote.

Hey guys–

I’m no longer a volunteer for the Perriello campaign–I’m back at school four hundred miles away. But I’m still phonebanking for Tom when I can, and I thought I’d take a moment to make the case for giving Tom a small last-minute contribution to help him send Virgil Goode back to Rocky Mount.

The race is close–if you read SSP, you know that. SurveyUSA, Tom’s internals, Cook, and the “GOP Death List” agree that the race is tight and getting tighter.

Tom’s fundraising has been on par with Virgil’s, and his ground game (EIGHT dedicated field offices!) is stellar. But those things were both true in August, when SurveyUSA showed Tom down 34 points.

So what helped slash Virgil’s massive lead? The campaign went on air with some effective ads that introduced Tom to the voters. People know Virgil–he’s been in office for a decade and his father was a state senator before him. Tom has an incredible rapport with people–and genuinely loves talking about their concerns–but the district is big and he can’t shake everyone’s hand. That’s what the ads are for.

The Perriello campaign is contesting the entire 5th district–places like Appomattox, Farmville, and Bedford–where Democrats haven’t ventured since, well, Virgil Goode was a Democrat. If you take the trouble to show up, people will vote for you–but only if they feel like they know you first.

So help Tom’s campaign keep his awesome ads on the air (in a cheap media market!). He’ll be a great congressman–he’s tireless and compassionate, and has a real track record of helping people from Sierra Leone to Southside Virginia.

Thanks,

Andrew

www.actblue.com/page/andrewforperriello