2003 survey finds frosh more politically aware.

With the 2004 fall presidential election on the horizon, new college students appear to be more interested in politics than ever before. The 37th annual survey by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute of 276,449 students at 413 four-year schools found that 33.9% felt it was important to "keep up to date with political affairs," up from 32.9% in the 2002 survey.

Taken in the fall of 2003 among incoming first-year students, the survey found 50.3% call themselves "middle of the road" in their political views, a slight decrease from 50.8% in 2002. "Over time we've seen a general decline in the liberal label, and it's typically been replaced by middle-of-the-road attitudes," according to Linda Sax, who directs the survey as an associate professor of education at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Overall, first-year students still tended to be liberals; 27.0% favored liberal politics compared with 22.7% who favored conservative politics. Regardless of their political viewpoints, "Students are definitely becoming more interested in the political scene," Sax said.

The change is a shift to the right, with those considering themselves on the far right inching up from 1.3% in 2002 to 1.6% in 2003, and those seeing themselves on the conservative side increasing from 20.0% in 2002 to 21.1% in 2003.

But on campus, only 7.3% planned to participate in student government and 6.3% in protests/demonstrations.

Differences on political issues

From the data, women appear to be more liberal than men, supporting positions such as the rights of same-sex couples, gun control and affirmative action. Men were more likely than women to support conservative positions such as ignoring the rights of same-sex couples, increasing military spending, abolishing affirmative action and believing that women should not work outside of the home. Here are percentages of students who agreed or somewhat agreed with these statements: