Megan Hudson

Math for Liberal Arts

11/2/10

Polling Experience

On November 2, 2010, Claire Minter, Luke Freeman and I went to Cline Elementary School to poll voters. At the beginning of the day (we went to Cline Elementary around 11:15 and stayed till 11:45), the idea of asking people who they voted for did not seem too bad, but by the end of our time at Cline Elementary, we realized that people really do not want to share their politics (even if it is anonymous!).

All three of us took turns approaching people, each using our script and being our usual friendly-selves. The first older woman we encountered was incredibly nice and upon realizing that we had forgotten a pen (!), she went inside the voting place and got us one, wishing us luck with our project. If only everyone had been like her!

Throughout the course of our 30 minutes in the freezing cold outside of Cline Elementary, we approached 14 people, and got 10 answers. We approached a small group of people who seemed friendly as they were leaving and were quickly shot down (very rudely, I might add!) by our request (even though we mentioned it was for our school assignment). We realize now that most of the people that were corporative about submitting their answers were elderly people and that anyone in the 20-50 age range literally wanted nothing to do with us. That is somewhat of a shame as it seems that most of the 50+ crowd voted for Rand Paul. We also had an elderly gentleman talk to us for quite some time about his years serving in the Navy and a little bit about his political beliefs.

Overall, the experience was so-so. It was freezing and kind of miserable in the cold but we got the results we were looking for.

Rand Paul: 5

Jack Conway: 5

Time: 11:15-11:45am