‘Most students don’t share my views’: Why is talking about politics so difficult?

Abstract

One of the unexpected parts of interviewing students about political action was how uncertain they were about the perspectives of other students. As part of a series of in-depth interviews I undertook with students in 2015, I asked fifty-nine students whether they thought other students shared their political views. Only thirteen agreed that ‘most’ did. These students typically argued that ‘people mostly believe the same things’ but that ‘we just have different paths to get there’ or that ‘they have different ways of doing that’. All but two of these students were highly active in clubs on campus, and they included eight of the nine students who were active in youth wings of political parties.