There's been a lot of talk that young people — one of Barack Obama's core constituencies — won't be voting in the same numbers or with the same intensity as in 2008.
Monday, on the USF Tampa campus, results from a campus straw poll showed that Obama's support at Tampa's biggest university dropped from 64 percent to 63 percent.
Of the 1,645 ballots cast to students, Mitt Romney received 30 percent of the vote; Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson (who supports legalizing weed) garnered 3 percent of the vote; Green Party candidate Jill Stein 2 percent; and all others 2 percent.
"College students still align solidly with President Obama, a trend that tracks with national polls," said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at USF. The challenge for the president is getting them to turn out on election day."
The event was sponsored by the Pi Sigma Alpha, USF's Honors College and Student Government.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2012.