Nearly three-fourths of undergraduate GW students will be casting their ballots for Sen. John Kerry on Election Day, according to a Hatchet poll taken during the past month.

The survey, which polled 205 freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, found that 74 percent of students will vote for Kerry while 14 percent will cast their ballots for President Bush. Seven percent of students listed themselves as undecided, four percent said they were not voting and one percent pledged their support to independent candidate Ralph Nader.

Nationwide, Kerry enjoys a 13 percent lead over Bush among college students, according to an October poll conducted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.

GW students said they felt the war on terror was the most important issue in this year’s election, with 35 percent of those polled expressing their concern about the issue. The war in Iraq and the economy were the second and third most pressing issues, respectively.

Data for the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 6.8 percent, was gathered during the first two weeks of October. Hatchet staffers stood outside popular campus locations such as the Marvin Center and Kogan Plaza at different times of the day and asked one out of every four students to fill out a survey. The responses from graduate students, who did not generate a sample proportional to their total population number, were removed from the tally.

Though the poll was conducted more than two weeks before Tuesday’s election, 84 percent of those polled said they would be “very likely” to keep their choice for president. Eleven percent said they were “somewhat likely” to stick with their decision.

-Gabriel Okolski