As politics becomes more divisive, Granite Bay High School is confronted with the question: What do we believe politically?

In the spirit of answering this question, the Journalism classroom released a poll, designed to figure out the political leanings of the student body of GBHS. There were a total of 39 respondents. Using this representative sample of students, the following questions were asked:

1. What is your name? (OPTIONAL)
2. What political party are you a part of? 
3. How would you rate your political leanings? 
4. Which candidate do you support in the presidential election?
5. Have you seen or experienced political divisions and strife at your GBHS? If so, write it below. If not, write N/A.
6. Do you trust the official political projections published by the media?
7. In your honest opinion, what do you think will happen during and after the election? Who will win, and what effect will it have?

The results were very interesting: 17 of the 39 polled, or 43.5 percent of the students, declined to put their name on the poll. 6 students only put their first name, and 16 put both their first and last names. 

38.5% of the students identified as a Republican, while 20.5% did so as a Democrat, and 17.9% were Independents. 7.7%  were Libertarians, and 15.6% were of another party, including, notably, one self-described anarchist. 

Most people landed on the right side of the political spectrum to some degree, with 21 placing themselves there, and nine others putting themselves on the left side of the spectrum. Nine claimed to be a moderate, not being far right or left. 

38.5% supported Biden, with 30.8% loathing both Biden and Trump, but grudgingly supporting Biden. Only 7.7% of the polled Biden supporters did so enthusiastically. In contrast, 41% of students supported Trump, with 23.1% eagerly supporting him, and 17.9% disliking both candidates, but backing Trump. Only one person was undecided, and the rest of the 15.4% hated both candidates to the point of abstaining from the election altogether. 

10 claimed to have seen a form of political strife, with many claiming that most of the fighting is over social media, and a few wrote that they had seen some ruined friendships over the issue. 28 said they hadn’t.

50.3% said that they did not trust the media’s official electoral projections, while 23.1% wrote that they did, and about a quarter had responses that were all basically variants of it depending on the source. 

18, or 46.1% said they believed that Trump would win, 14, 35.8% said they weren’t sure, and 7, or 17.9% said they thought Biden would win. The general consensus among everyone was that regardless of who won, it would trigger a lot of riots and anger.