The Leon and Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy has released a new poll of (four-year) college students, conducted by Hart Research. The findings confirm earlier poll results that suggest college students, as with young voters in general, are leaning strongly toward the Democrats and Kerry.

In terms of party ID, Democrats currently enjoy a healthy lead among students of 14 points (44-30).

In the poll's prospective ballot question, Kerry leads Bush by 12 points (42-30) among students, with just 4 percent going to Nader (note that Kerry’s lead is actually slightly larger–13 points (45-32)–among students who are registered voters). Kerry's support is broad and includes leads among men (7 points) and among whites (8 points).

College students also favor Kerry over Bush on a wide range of characteristics. By 28 points, they think Kerry better understands the needs of college students, by 18 points, they believe he "cares about people like me", by 12 points that he is honest and truthful, by 10 points that he is personally likable, by 9 points that he can get things done and by 6 points that would use good judgement in a crisis. Bush receives advantages only on "willing to take a stand, even if it is unpopular (8 points) and being a strong leader (1 point).

On issues, Kerry's advantages are even more pronounced. Bush has a lead only on defending the country from future terrorist attacks (13 points). But Kerry leads on protecting the environment (45 points), improving education (27 points), dealing with the costs of college education (27 points), improving the health care system (26 points), improving the jobs situation (24 points) and "making wise decisions about what to do in Iraq" (4 points).

Finally, consistent with other polls, college students support allowing gay marriage (52-38) and overwhelmingly oppose a constitutional amendment to ban such marriages (63-29).

The only bad news here for Kerry and the Democrats is that students express increasingly low levels of confidence in the efficacy of voting in presidential elections as a way to bring about social change. That kind of attitude could contribute to keeping turnout down, when the Democrats would clearly benefit from as high turnout as possible among college students.

On the other hand, the survey found that college students were overwhelmingly convinced that the outcome of this particular election would really matter for making progress on the important issues facing the country--more convinced, in fact, than the public as a whole. Democrats would be well-advised to try to build on students' clear understanding of the stakes of this election.