College students have a reputation for being liberal, but first-year students haven’t described themselves as this liberal by this measure since 1973, when the Vietnam War was winding down and the draft was ended.
Some 33.5% of students described themselves as liberal or far left, compared with 31.7% in 2014 and 29.6% in 2012, UCLA’s annual CIRP survey of first-time, full-time freshmen found. In 1973, the total was 36.4%.
On the other side of the political spectrum, 21.6% described themselves as conservative or far right, slightly more than the 21% that said so in 2014. In 1973, 14.9% described themselves that way, the survey found.
The last time those on the right outnumbered those on the left among college freshmen was in 1981, just after Ronald Reagan was elected president. Among the shrinking plurality that describes themselves as middle of road, more have shifted liberal than conservative since then.
Still unclear is whether these college freshmen will act on their political beliefs by voting. They profess to want to: Nearly 60% of this year’s freshmen said they are very likely to vote in an election while in college, compared with just over 50% of those asked a year earlier, the first time the question was asked. But historically, the younger the voting age group, the lower the turnout has been.
Should they turn out in large numbers at the polls, that could benefit candidates like Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist who is challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. He was backed by 83% of New Hampshire’s Democratic primary voters 18 to 29 years old on Tuesday, according to exist polls conducted by Edison Research.
Read: Young voters like Sanders because he hasn’t given up on their future
The flip side is the liberal social views espoused by college students could make it more difficult for conservative candidates.
“When politicians on the conservative end of the spectrum highlight some these social issues that aren’t really resonating with college students, it may turn students away from other messages that may resonate more,” said Kevin Eagan, the director of UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program, or CIRP.
Breaking down the data, women were more likely to be on the left (38.1% vs. 28.1% of men) while men were more likely to place themselves on the right (25.3% vs. 18.4%), the survey found.
Left-leaning students are more likely to be found at private universities (38.7%) and private historically black colleges and universities (44.1%), the survey found. Right-leaning students were most likely to be found at four-year religious colleges that aren’t Catholic (28%).
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Among individual issues, 81% said same-sex couples should have the right to marry, a similar rate as a year earlier. Underscoring the big shift in attitudes across the country in recent years, just 50.9% agreed in 1997, just after the Defense of Marriage Act was passed. By 2007, the share had climbed to 63.5%.
Support for legalizing marijuana crossed 50% for the first time, with 56.3%. When the question was first asked in 1968, just 20.3% agreed. It jumped to 48.4% in 1973, then fell back, bottoming out at 15.7% in 1989, in the wake of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign.
Those findings come as a survey last year found that more college students say they smoke marijuana virtually every day — 5.9% — than smoke cigarettes daily.
Read: Recreational marijuana sales hit nearly $1 billion in 2015
In another sign of political engagement, 8.5% of freshmen said there is a “very good chance” they would participate in student protests while in college, the highest share since the question was first asked in 1967, when just 5.2% thought so. Fast forward past the anti-war protests and bBy 1978, just 3.5% thought they would. In the 1980s, it peaked at 7.6% in 1989 and in the 1990s, it peaked at 8.4%.
This year’s UCLA survey covered 141,189 students. The margin of error is one percentage point.
