Political guild exit polls SGA election

By Anthony Norwood | gargoyle@flagler.edu

In the recent Student Government Association election, the political guild at Flagler College did entrance and exit polls as part of a project to watch the voting process as it was going on.

In their entrance polls, students were asked questions like “Who is the current SGA president?” and “Who will you be voting for?”

“Of the 300 people we polled only about 305 knew who the SGA president was,” Frank Mahoney, president of the political guild, said. “I thought that SGA had more notoriety than that.”

“Most people seemed out of touch with SGA,” Mahoney said. “I don’t know whether or not they can or just don’t e-mail the students, but a lot of students seemed disinterested.”

The exit polls showed that only 241 students came out to vote in the election. Erick Hueck won the election as president while Ashley O’Shea won the vice presidential seat.

“I wasn’t surprised at how the election turned out,” Mahoney said. “In our first polls, we saw that Erick was leading. People seemed to know who they were going to vote for beforehand, and Erick did a good job of making himself a presence on campus.”

The polls showed that of the people who voted in the election many live on campus.

Mahoney said the turnout though wasn’t unusually low.

“There was a little bit smaller turnout than last year, but this year it was raining and they had to change where the students could vote,” Mahoney said.

Doing the polls wasn’t easy for the Political Guild.

“We were a little bit restricted by the school I think,” Mahoney said, “I thought the election would have a little more transparency.”