U.S. college students favor Obama by 30%

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- A survey of 2,100 U.S. college students found President Barack Obama, a Democrat, favored by more than 30 percentage points over GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

Jennifer L. Lawless of the American University and director of the Women and Politics Institute and Richard L. Fox of Loyola Marymount University said an additional poll of 2,166 U.S. high school students ages of 13-17 favored Obama by 10 percentage points. There was no discernible gender gap among high school students overall. In swing states, though, female respondents were slightly more likely than male respondents to support Obama.

The poll, conducted by American University-GfK Custom Research LLC, was conducted Sept. 27-Oct. 16.

Lawless and Fox said despite the often vitriolic tone of the presidential campaign young people did not seem turned off -- 87 percent of U.S. college students said they planned to vote and 88 percent of high school students reported they would vote if they were old enough.

The gender gap was not very wide with college students -- 56.3 of women favored Obama and 52 percent of college men favored Obama, while 21.4 percent of women favored Romney and 26.2 of men favored Romney.

Obama's lead among college students was 35 points for those who live in swing states.

Both surveys have a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points.