James McClendon, Editor-in-Chief

UC students’ presidential favorites follow national trends, according to a Tangerine Presidential Poll conducted over the weekend.

With Election Day just over a week away, 43 percent said they would vote for Hillary Clinton, while 29 said they would choose Donald Trump. Gary Johnson came in at 8 percent and Jill Stein’s stood at 4 percent.

The standout number is the nearly 14 percent who are undecided – a number that could push the election in either direction.

Junior Malik Gayle believes this high number of undecided votes can be attributed to students not wanting to pick either candidate. However, he said that he is voting for Clinton.

“It’s the lesser of two evils in my eyes,” Gayle said. “We have a lot of people who are like ‘I don’t want to vote for either of them’.”

Sophomore Ethan Kipp is one of the students who had mixed feeling about whom he was going to vote for.

“Originally I was going to vote for Jill Stein but I read an article about her that gave me a new perspective,” Kipp said. “I can’t afford to throw away my vote on a third-party candidate that is not going to win.”

According to USA Today, the national polling averages for the presidential race has Clinton at 45 percent, Trump at 40 percent, Johnson at 5.8 percent and Stein at 2 percent. Clinton holds a 21-point lead over Trump in New York.

Even with the slight uptick in Trump supporters across the nation, many young voters feel they have to settle for Clinton.

“In both cases we have to choose between two people who are dishonest and change their opinions a lot,” Kipp said. “I’m going to end up voting for Clinton anyway.”