Fifth district congressional candidate Democratic Jane Dittmar leads opponent Republican Tom Garrett by almost 30 percentage points, according to a recent poll conducted by The Cavalier Daily, conducted in partnership with a faculty advisory committee and the Center for Survey Research.
Of University students who plan on voting in Virginia’s fifth district, 50 percent support Dittmar, a former chair of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. In contrast, just 22 percent of students said they support Garrett, current state senator for Virginia’s 22nd district. Twenty-eight percent of students said they were still unsure whom they would be voting for at the time of polling.
“The fifth [district] does lean right, but Charlottesville is heavily liberal,” Tanner Hirschfeld, a first-year College student and Chapter Director at Tom Garrett for Congress, said regarding the support for Dittmar.
While Dittmar has more support from minority groups than Garrett, Garrett has stronger support among several minority groups than he does with white students. Forty-three percent of Hispanic students and 33 percent of Asian students noted they supported Garrett, compared with 28 percent of white students. However, Garrett had significantly less support among African American students — only 6 percent said they supported him.
“There’s this misconception that conservatism is evil or racist and that’s just really not the truth,” Hirschfeld said. “We’re really concerned with making sure people know what the true values of conservatism are.”
College Republicans has been working closely alongside Garrett’s campaign to get more students involved in the election and aware of the issues.
“The biggest problem is just that college students just don’t know [the candidates]. They need to put a face with a name,” Hirschfeld said.
Among students who said they were registered to vote in the fifth district, 56.9 percent were able to successfully name both congressional candidates in The Cavalier Daily’s survey.
University Democrats is also working with Dittmar’s campaign to get voters informed. Both organizations have many students volunteering with the respective campaigns with phone banks and canvassing local student housing and first-year dormitories.
Despite these efforts, many students do not feel more informed. Third-year Engineering student Nathan Koch, who took the survey, said in an email statement that he has “not seen any organizations actively campaigning on Grounds.”
Similarly, first-year College student Meghan Karthikeyan said while she herself has volunteered with Dittmar’s campaign, she has only seen “people posting on Facebook for Tom Garrett,” and never any on-Grounds outreach.
Graphic by Leo Dominguez
In addition to University Democrats’ and College Republicans’ work, there has been a “big push by nonpartisan organizations to register [students] on Grounds,” Adam Kimelman, second-year College student and College Republicans vice chair of campaigns, said.
“[It’s] still a lot harder to get people to care about their local election,” Kimelman said.
Students are often so overloaded with classes and extracurriculars that it can be hard to feel like a part of the larger community, Maggie Thornton, Dittmar deputy campaign manager, said.
“Students should register to vote where they feel the most affinity,” Thornton said. “We see a huge number of students who do want to feel a part of the Charlottesville and fifth district community.”
Although the majority of students are only in Charlottesville for their time at the University, “most alumni still care deeply about the school,” Payton Palmerton, third-year College student and field organizer for Dittmar’s campaign, said.
“Students would [not] want to come back and not see the school in a bad state,” Palmerton said.
The contentious nature of the presidential election could affect how students vote in the congressional race. Among students surveyed, nearly 90 percent of those voting for Dittmar support Clinton for president; most Garrett supporters are voting for Trump, Gary Johnson or are undecided.
The importance of voting — and especially students voting — is one stance that receives unilateral bipartisan support.
“[It’s] really important that our generation prove we’re not the apathetic millennials people paint us as,” Palmerton said.
The Garrett campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
For more information on polling methodology, click here.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Thornton is Dittmar's campaign manager and a graduate student. She is her deputy campaign manager and is no longer a student.
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