Biederman leads 2-to-1 in early polls

USG vice president Rob Biederman '08 seemed poised to win the student government presidency last night, with close to half of students polled saying they have voted or plan to vote for him.

Biederman commands 47 percent of the vote compared to fellow junior Grant Gittlin's 24 percent, according to an unscientific poll of 416 students conducted by The Daily Princetonian last night.

Twenty-nine percent of voters, however, said they remain undecided between the two candidates. Voting ends Tuesday at 1 p.m.

Biederman expressed "cautious optimism" at the news last night.

"Though right now I'm much more focused on campaigning than speculation about results, I'm excited to hear that the student body seems to be expressing support for the platform that I laid out," he said in an interview.

Gittlin said last night that he plans to "keep campaigning as hard as I can to do a job that I would love to do." He described himself as "the perennial optimist."

Biederman bested Gittlin on both trustworthiness and capability measures in Sunday night's poll, though fewer students deemed Biederman trustworthy than saw him as a capable leader.

The race between the two candidates was tightest among upperclassmen, with 37 percent supporting Biederman and 34 percent supporting Gittlin, the junior class president. Twenty-eight percent of students said they were undecided. The numbers have been rounded and don't add up to 100 because of non-responses for particular questions.

Biederman, however, appeared to carry the underclassmen vote handily, with 52 percent of students supporting him over the 18 percent supporting Gittlin. Election observers have noted that Biederman, in his capacity as student government vice president, had better name recognition among younger students.

Support for Biederman was markedly lower among upperclass eating club members, with 38 percent of students backing him compared to 41 percent backing Gittlin.

Among upperclassmen not in eating clubs, Biederman had a commanding lead over Gittlin, with 31 percent supporting him and 18 percent supporting Gittlin. A large number of those students — 49 percent — remain undecided, however.

Also, contrary to expectations, more students said they continue to view concerns about grade deflation as a more pressing issue than the new four-year residential colleges.

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Both candidates made concerns about the colleges the centerpiece of their campaigns, in contrast to last year's election, when current USG president Alex Lenahan '07 focused much of his energy on grade deflation.

Thirty-eight percent of students identified grade deflation as the primary issue facing student government, compared to 19 percent for colleges. Twenty-six percent of students identified other issues and 15 percent said they didn't know.

Asked which candidate is more trustworthy, 31 percent expressed a preference for Biederman, while 20 percent said they prefer Gittlin. Around half of those surveyed said they remain undecided.

On the question of capability, 47 percent say they believe Biederman is the more capable of the two. Twelve percent chose Gittlin as the more capable candidate, while 40 percent were undecided.

Biederman's more conspicuous role as vice president seems to have boosted his perceived effectiveness in the eyes of the voters.

"He was in charge of the Yale buses, [and] he's the current vice president," said Nick Tagher '10. "It just seemed sensible for those reasons that he'd be the next president of the USG."

Chris Arp '08, however, took a different view. "What concerns me most is which candidate would be happiest in that position," he said, adding that he plans to support Gittlin.

Survey data collected by Kate Benner, Ilya Blanter, Rachel Dunn, Anastasia Erbe, Owen Fletcher, Jennifer Hart, Arielle Gorin, Reilly Kiernan, Nathalie Lagerfeld, Tatiana Lau, Wendy Liu, Clare Premo, Daniella Roseman and Maxwell Weidmann.