Pack Poll recently released a series of articles about student opinions of the recent recension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Pack Poll is an NC State organization that conducts opinion polls to accurately report undergraduate opinions on campus. According to a poll conducted by Politico, a majority of voters in the U.S. wants Congress to pass legislation allowing DACA recipients to stay in the U.S., and according to Pack Poll the same is generally true for NC State students.
Devin Miller, a third-year studying statistics, is one of the student pollsters at Pack Poll who conducted the polls that gauge student opinions on DACA. Three Pack Poll articles were written about DACA. This includes Miller’s article “The More You Know about DACA, the More You Support It?” It focused on how question wording or the wording of background information can skew student opinion.
Miller’s work found that if background information was added to questions, student’s approval of DACA increased 15 percent.
“I definitely expected a sort of shift, but it did shift more than I expected it to,” Miller said. “What happened was that most of the people who before had no opinion, went to approval.”
Student opinions on the recension of DACA were stark. Most of the 243 respondents from the 700 contacted, agreed with their respective political party’s position. In general, the results were skewed towards a liberal point of view, but undergraduate opinions typically lean more to the left, according to Pack Poll. Pack Poll takes this into account because they specifically study undergraduate opinions, not the general American opinion, which is less skewed.
Miller also spoke on how student opinions are sometimes not well-formed or subject to change depending on their background knowledge.
“That’s kind of the entire thinking of Pack Poll, in my opinion,” Miller said. “It’s the entire thinking of this class and realizing how malleable people’s minds are because … what you’re asking for is their opinion, before you have even asked if they have an opinion.”
Pack Poll also surveyed NC State students about the potential DACA deal, passing DACA into law in exchange for funding to build walls along on the Mexican-U.S. border. The overall response was 63 percent disapproval, and respondents differed along party lines. A large number of Democrats, Republicans and Independents strongly disapproved, 60 percent, 26 percent and 38 percent respectively.
Ali Hurst, a first-year exploratory studies student, spoke about how her opinion compared to that of the ones Pack Poll released.
“In this case, my opinion was reflective of the Pack Poll, so I would say it was reflective of a population, but doesn’t necessarily reflect individual opinions, which is obvious in a survey,” Hurst said.
