Around New England

Harvard Graduate Students Unionizing Vote: ‘Very Liberal’ Beat ‘Liberal’

April 25, 2018

Graduate students at Harvard University are generally left of center, but how far left of center helped determine the outcome of the vote to unionize.

An exit poll conducted by The Harvard Crimson provides a sense of where Harvard graduate students are coming from.

About 52 percent of those who voted to unionize last week consider themselves “very liberal,” while only 39 percent of the Yes voters consider themselves merely “liberal.” (That’s 91 percent total.)

Of the No voters, only 25 percent consider themselves “very liberal” while 42 percent consider themselves “liberal.” (That’s 67 percent total.)

Only about 1.5 percent of the Yes voters consider themselves conservative or very conservative; while only about 9 percent of the No voters identify as conservative or very conservative. The others on each side call themselves moderate.

Yes voters were also about twice as likely to have mixed or negative feelings toward their faculty adviser than No voters.

Reporters for the student newspaper surveyed about one-third of the graduate students who voted. The Crimson‘s exit poll correctly predicted that the Yes vote won last week before the official outcome was announced, though the final figure (56 percent) was higher than the exit poll’s finding (50.6 percent).