An unsci­en­tific study based on data culled from Face­book net­work pages.

Prob­a­bly the most press­ing ques­tion on your mind (if you even both­ered click­ing on this link, which I’m assum­ing you have), is where do the col­leges stand based on their stu­dent bod­ies in polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion? Until now there hasn’t been an espe­cially easy way to get this data, but now I can. Ranked from most lib­eral to most con­ser­v­a­tive. Please note that I com­bined “Very Lib­eral and Lib­eral” and “Very Con­ser­v­a­tive and Con­ser­v­a­tive” into “Lib­eral” and “Con­ser­v­a­tive” groups respec­tively. The “Very” mod­ifer results is mul­ti­plied by 1.1 (10%) for a slight adjust. Ranked on Liberal:Conservative Ratio because many (near 50% aver­age for net­works) don’t respond to this ques­tion at all, and is thus the most reli­able indi­ca­tor of the gen­eral makeup.

Ever­green State Col­lege Is 40.5% Lib­eral and 2.1% Con­ser­v­a­tive with a ratio of 19.3:1

The Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton is a dis­tant sec­ond with 25.5% Lib­eral, 7.1% Con­ser­v­a­tive, and a 3.59:1 Ratio

West­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity is third with 31.6% Lib­eral, 12.6% Con­ser­v­a­tive, and a ratio of 2.5:1

Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­sity is barely edg­ing out East­ern for fourth with 18.3% Lib­eral, 14.1% Con­ser­v­a­tive, and a ratio of 1.29:1

East­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity fifth with 16.2% Lib­eral, 12.6% Con­ser­v­a­tive, and a ratio of 1.23:1

Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity is “most con­ser­v­a­tive” (in quotes because it is still slightly lib­eral) with 17.3% Lib­eral, and 15.1% Con­ser­v­a­tive, giv­ing us a ratio of 1.14:1.

No real sur­prises here… the top three slots are all filled by the three col­leges west of the Cas­cades, and the East­ern Wash­ing­ton col­leges are notice­ably more bal­anced in their polit­i­cal views.

Some inter­est­ing notes:

–Fully 17% of Evergreen’s stu­dents have them­selves listed as “Other.” The clos­est is 6% “other” in a tie with WWU, CWU, and WSU.

- Ever­green is the most open with their affil­i­a­tions and only 33% have not listed theirs. EWU is the most secre­tive with 49% unlisted.

- WSU’s over­all win­ner is for stu­dents who list them­selves as “Mod­er­ate” (whom I sus­pect are con­ser­v­a­tives in denial): 17%, which is more than the next high­est cat­e­gory. CWU and EWU also have “mod­er­ate” as the top list­ing: both with 15%. UW, WWU and Ever­green all have lib­eral as their top listing.

- The most Apa­thetic is Ever­green with 3%, but most col­leges are at 2% so don’t hinge on this too ter­ri­bly much.

- Ever­green also is the win­ner in “Lib­er­tar­ian,” with 2% and actu­ally beat­ing every­thing both “Con­ser­v­a­tive” and “Very Conservative.”

- The East­ern Col­leges (EWU [Coun­try as 2^nd], CWU [Coun­try as 2^nd] and WSU [Coun­try as 2^nd]) all seem to not like list­ing their favorite bands, while the West­ern Col­leges don’t have any gen­res listed in their top ten music. This leads me to con­clude that there isn’t any out­stand­ing artist in the Coun­try genre and that all of the singers and artists are really just back­ground noise.

- Jack John­son is the top music for all col­leges except for Ever­green, who don’t have him listed in their top 10, but do pre­fer The Beatles.