Students nationwide, as reflected in the IOP poll, rank the economy as the most important issue, with Iraq a close second. Twenty-five percent of students in the national poll ranked education as one of the top two issues in the election, compared to only 11 percent of Harvard students.

Jonathan S. Chavez ’05, who helped oversee the IOP poll, speculated that these disparities might be due in part to the location and financial outlook of Harvard students as compared to the rest of the country.

“My guess would be that at Harvard a lot of the issues national students face with education, we don’t, like financial aid,” Chavez said, adding that concern about future job prospects could account for the high premium placed on economics by students nationwide.

“We’re polling students in states that have been a lot harder hit by downturns in the economy,” Chavez said of the IOP’s results.

Men and women are less polarized about the issues and the candidates at Harvard than are students nationwide, the poll results suggest. The IOP poll found a gender gap among college voters, with Kerry leading Bush by 58 to 34 percent among women but only by 47 to 46 percent among men. The Crimson’s poll found a smaller gap, with 77 percent of women supporting Kerry compared to 70 percent of men.

Women at Harvard were less likely to name the economy as one of the top two most important issues in the election, with 26 percent ranking it that high compared to 38 percent of Harvard men. In contrast, 36 percent of women and 23 percent of men said moral values issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, were among the top two most pressing issues.

This week’s polling results represent a shift in campus sentiment from The Crimson’s pre-primary poll in December 2003.

Then, only 18 percent of Democratic-leaning students said they would vote for Kerry, while 47 percent said they would support then-frontrunner Howard Dean, the governor of Vermont.

Even after Kerry won the nomination, his favorable reception among Democrats has been attributed in the press to an “Anything but Bush” attitude.

But Lucien K. Carter ’05-’06, who worked for the Kerry campaign last summer, says this is no longer the case.

“I think people actually really like John Kerry and think he would make a lot better candidate than George Bush or anybody else out there,” he said.

Meghan E. Haggerty ’06, the president of Harvard Students for Kerry, pointed to shifts in Kerry’s campaign leadership and the recent presidential debates as ways the Senator won students’ support.

“I think that in many ways students were impressed by his comeback in the primaries and thus they put more effort into learning about who Sen. Kerry actually is,” Haggerty said.

Six percent of respondents said they strongly approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president, and 15 percent said they “somewhat approve.”

Those who strongly disapprove of Bush’s performance make up 56 percent of students surveyed, and another 22 percent said they somewhat disapprove, for a total of 78 percent.

Those numbers have not changed significantly since December 2003, when 76 percent of students disapproved of how Bush had handled his job while 24 percent approved.

—Staff writer Rebecca D. O’Brien can be reached at robrien@fas.harvard.edu.