A recent political poll of the Hill student body conducted by AP Government classes revealed a deeply divided campus. The results showed an especially wide rift between across gender lines.  

The survey included various questions about demographics, gender, voting eligibility, and preferred candidates. The survey creating process was designed by Instructor of History Nicholas Malinak for his AP Government Class. 

 “The goal was to work on our skills designing a poll, to practice our ability to analyze data, to get a better sense of the Hill student population’s political beliefs, and to compare with the Hill News poll in order to see how different polls can vary in their results,” Malinak explained.   

Grace Wang ‘25 commented on their experience creating the survey. Wang ‘25 describes their classes’ process, “We first did a super unrelated survey about humans wrestling animals, from that survey we learned that the question order and wording could also affect the poll results on top of the given differences like gender and demographics.” The students had to decide on the platform, questions, and wording.  

Naturally, certain questions were cut from the survey. Wang ’25 comments on a question that she wished would have been kept. “Going through the brainstorming google document, there was a question that asked about whether the responders will vote in this current election if they could vote, and I feel like on top of which candidate they prefer, this could also be a good question.” 

The results were organized by Malink to show the student body’s preferences and levels of support, political opinions of the entire study body and from international students, support by form and gender, participation by form, and Hill student voter eligibility.  

Wang ‘25 was surprised by the large gender divide in candidate preferences. “There was a big divide in gender, 50% of female respondents strongly supported Harris, and 46% male respondents strongly supported Trump,” she explained.  

The survey received responses from 150 boys and 153 girls with significant split between the two. The results revealed that female identifying students were 50% in support of Kamala Harris, 36% undecided, and 14% in support of Donald Trump. Male identifying students were 20% in support of Kamala Harris, 34% undecided, and 46% in support of Donald Trump. To include students’ candidate preferences with “leaners,” the female identifying students were 63% in support of Kamala, 7% undecided, and 30% in support of Donald Trump. Male identifying students with “leaners” included were 36% in support of Kamala, 5% undecided, and 59% in support of Donald Trump.  

Other notable findings were found through the polls. There was a relatively equal separation for preferred candidates with 36% for Kamala Harris, 34% with no preference/undecided, and 34% for Trump. The polls revealed that 20% of the male identifying students but only 5% of female students strongly agreed to the statement “I feel comfortable sharing my political opinions while at The Hill School.” The top issues for the Hill student body were the economy, inflation/prices, immigration, and abortion. Abortion was chosen by 63% of female identifying students and 10% of male identifying students. 

The polls were created with the intent of providing a new learning experience for the AP Government students, and to supply more information of the student body’s political opinions.