Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
A quarter of prospective college students say they'd shun a school in a state whose politics or policies they abhor, a recent survey finds.
In a separate survey by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation published Thursday, 72% of college students said that the reproductive health laws in their school's state affected their decision to stay enrolled.
Why it matters: Americans are choosing where to live and whom to associate with based on politics, exacerbating polarization.
Driving the news: In a poll of 1,865 college-bound high school seniors conducted this winter by Art & Science Group, 1 in 4 said they passed over a school they had initially considered based exclusively on state-level policies or politics.
The top reasons left-leaning students gave for ruling out schools in a particular state were that they were too conservative overall, as well as too conservative on abortion and reproductive rights specifically.
Right-leaning students were more likely to rule out states for being "too Democratic overall" than for particular issues.
What they're saying: "What struck me most was that it was a full quarter of students who told us this, and that a third of [that group] were ruling out schools in their own states," David Strauss, principal of the Art & Science Group, tells Axios.
Yes, but: The high schoolers' responses won't necessarily translate into voting with their feet — a Republican student accepted to Harvard might be willing to overlook that it's in liberal Massachusetts.
Backstory: Strauss said his company decided to conduct the poll when "we started getting calls from some of our clients after Dobbs," the Supreme Court's landmark decision last June to end the constitutional right to an abortion.
Of note: Nearly half of college students told pollsters in 2022 that they wouldn't share a dorm room with someone of the opposite political party.
Between the lines: "This is going to add a significant dollop of structural disadvantage to some institutions," depending where they're located, Strauss said.
Methodology: Art & Science Group interviewed 1,865 domestic high school seniors in January and February of 2023; 62% were female and 62% were white. Responses were weighted to reflect the larger domestic college-going population; the margin of error was plus or minus 3.5%.
Editor's note: This story was originally published on April 20.