A Stanford Daily poll suggests that the ASSU Exec slate Tention/Niu holds an early lead in the Exec race with Khaled/Ocon providing the closest challenge. Means/Lozano and Anderson/Seter lag among undergraduates that decided their vote before the elections on April 13 and 14. However, the large portion of undecided voters suggests that the Exec race is still highly competitive.
Among those that have already decided on their first-choice vote, Tention/Niu leads with 31 percent support, trailed by Khaled/Ocon with 20 percent, Means/Lozano with 12 percent and Anderson/Seter with 6 percent. The remaining 31 percent of respondents indicated that their first-choice vote for Exec is undecided.
The ASSU uses ranked-choice voting to decide the ASSU Exec winner, which means that if no candidate reaches 50 percent of the vote, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the second-choice preferences of their voters are used to reallocate votes. The process of elimination and reallocation is repeated until one candidate exceeds 50 percent of the vote.
Almost half of undergraduate respondents indicated that they were undecided in their second-place choice. No candidate received an overwhelming share of the second-place ballots. If Anderson/Seter and Means/Lozano are the first two candidates to be eliminated and their second-place votes reallocated, the Tention/Niu slate would see 36 percent support, and Khaled/Ocon would see 24 percent support among decided voters.
However, the final result could be affected by third-place votes and undecided voters.
This year’s ballot will also see three constitutional amendments. Majorities were undecided on Amendments A and C, which would prohibit appropriating student funds for anything that violates the law or University policy and modify the rules regarding petitioning in the annual grant process, respectively. Amendment B, which would ban officer salaries for student group leaders, received support from 39 percent of respondents. 26 percent were opposed to the amendment and 35 percent were undecided. All constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority to pass.
The ASSU Senate itself had a net 18 point favorable rating, with 42 percent indicating that they “don’t know” how they feel about the Senate. The Stanford Daily’s poll was conducted on April 11 and 12 via email and had a margin of error of plus or minus 8 percent with 144 respondents.
Contact Caleb Smith at [email protected].