This year’s presidential election is important for a lot of students here at Chaminade University since it happens to be many students’ first time being able to vote. To get a good look at which candidate the students were leaning toward, I spent all of Thursday, Oct. 15, walking around campus asking each student, faculty, and staff member that I crossed paths with the same question: Joe Biden or Donald Trump?

In a highly unscientific poll, when 25 people were asked whether they were voting for Biden or Trump, 23 out of the 25 respondents said they were voting for Biden. As one might guess in our Democratic state of Hawaii, at least four said that they were voting for Biden because it seemed to be their best bet of voting for “the lesser of two evils.”

The one student and one staff member who admitted to voting for Trump said they were doing so based on the work he’s done in the office and the peace he has kept among nations. These reasons were enough to allow Trump supporters to overlook the misogynistic comments he’s made in the past.

Freshman Drake Mohbeer said he keeps up with politics by regularly watching the news and both candidates’ debates and speeches to make an informed choice. Mohbeer, who is from just outside of Los Angeles, said that he does adequate research to approach politics in a well-informed way and even admitted to being hesitant on saying who he voted for in this year’s presidential election due in part to being from a mostly blue state. Despite the backlash he’s faced over being labeled as a Trump supporter, the 18-year-old explained his reasoning behind voting for Trump.

“Over the four years, Trump did great for the economy by increasing jobs and bringing unemployment to an all-time low,” Mohbeer said. “Although he could work for social justice better, we’ve been strong as a military country. When it comes down to Covid, it is up to the governors on how they decide to handle the situation, and it is not a reflection on Trump.”

Mohbeer explained that he believes Trump is painted out to be the bad guy on the media and that if he didn’t do his own research he would have assumed that Trump is against immigration, makes fun of disabled people, and is blatantly disrespectful to women. However, the freshman added that he thinks manipulated media intentionally misconstrue information to make the president look bad.

Oahu local and senior Bryson Dalmacio explained that this will be his first time voting because he believes this election is potentially life-altering. The business administration and masters program major said the divide between politicians has encouraged him to change his bipartisan stance and take a different approach to politics.

“I am voting for Biden because a lot of his policies cater more toward the middle class, compared to Trump where everything is one-sided and caters more toward business owners and a specific group of people,” 25-year-old Dalmacio said. “I was bipartisan but I figured that since the candidates are extremists and because the parties are not so balanced anymore, I thought I should get into politics. I make sure to keep up with both candidates by watching snippets on YouTube [and] sometimes TikTok.”

On the other hand, there seemed to be a middle ground between Trump and Biden where a majority of students leaned toward Biden for a similar reason to what 20-year-old nursing major Channel Green said. The Maui native explained that she does not keep up with politics in any way but occasionally catches something on social media about the two candidates.

“I’m voting for Biden, honestly because I don’t like Trump,” Green said. “I haven’t really gone into looking into Biden, but anything is better than Trump. He’s avoidant and doesn’t keep his word, and I don’t like the way he speaks about women. Overall I just don’t like Trump.”

A reoccurring theme among CUH students was how they all seemed to have similar responses. The reason they said they were voting for Biden was that they disagree with Trump’s inconsistency with how he speaks about people based on their looks or gender. They further explained how casting their vote for Biden was out of disdain for our current president and how he downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic.

Most students said they based their vote on their disapproval toward Trump and admitted to having not kept up with the candidates’ debates or their stance on policies in politics, or even watching the news.

According to Forbes, approximately 69% of individuals ages 19 to 29 said they would be voting this year, which surpasses the 47% of young voters who said they would vote in the 2016 election. The voting turnout for young individuals is at its highest point in history, the magazine reported.