Voter interest remains low

Voter+interest+remains+low

Light blue represents percent of total student body that did/plans to vote, dark blue represents students who didn’t/don’t plan on voting in the upcoming election. Photo courtesy UND Student Government.

The 2014 Student Government elections set for April 16 are quickly approaching, and the organization took advantage of their “Tuesday Twos” email survey to estimate how many people will vote.

Out of 1,386 online respondents, 490 said they anticipate on voting in the elections, which is 35.35 percent. This leaves 896 respondents who said they do not plan to turn out to vote, or 64.65 percent.

If only the 490 students from the poll vote in the election, the voter turnout will be about 3 percent. In last year’s election, 2,077 students voted, creating a voter turnout of about 14 percent of the student body.

To beat last year’s turnout, student government needs the 490 survey respondents and 1,588 more students to get out and vote.

Positions on student government include Student Body President and Vice President, 23 student senators representing different areas of study and residency and 10 university senators representing the student body at an institutional level.

The second part of the Tuesday Twos poll posed the question “Do you regularly read the Dakota Student (online or in print)?” and 291 out of 1,386 respondents said yes. 1,095 respondents said no, indicating that 79 percent of the student body do not regularly read the Dakota Student and 21 percent do.

Stay tuned in early April for a special Student Government elections edition of The Dakota Student that will provide information on all the candidates.

Emmy Erbes is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].