About 60 students came to a meeting held Sept. 4 to learn more about 2008 presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

“I think what is really inspirational about Barack Obama is the number of people who came out to support him,” said political science senior Steve Ross, Michigan coordinator for Students for Barack Obama.

The group is one of many organizations preparing for the upcoming election season.

“We’ve been very successful; we have about 80 members, and we get a few more every day,” said Carrie White, chairwoman for MSU students for John McCain. “(Sparticipation) was successful, and we got a little over 40 active students.”

Despite students like White and Ross, who are committed to their candidates, MSU’s Department of Communication Chairperson Charles Atkin said many students are not sold on the candidates.

“Voters have what you call soft preferences at this stage, and that applies to students as well as older voters,” Atkin said. “Early preference is quite likely to change as more and more information becomes available because we haven’t had any candidates come to this part of Michigan to do their campaigning.”

Supporters of Republican candidates are working to alleviate that problem by planning a trip to Mackinac Island where all of the Republican candidates will be available to campaign on their issues at the end of September.

“We’ll be taking up a lot of students to the Mackinac conference in September,” said Leo Madarang, a political theory and constitutional democracy senior and chairman for MSU Students for Mitt Romney. “It’ll be a great opportunity to see (Romney) speak and to hear him.”

Some students are taking a more local approach to introducing others to political candidates. International relations and German senior Tom Choske held a Spartans for Richardson campaign Thursday in order to create a campaign movement for the New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, another 2008 presidential candidate.

“We hope people will see him not as someone from a southwestern state but someone who is a good candidate and a good leader,” Choske said. “He wants to pull troops out of Iraq, and he has a clear plan of how to do that.”

Other students are organizing more grassroots efforts before the arrival of Michigan’s new presidential primary date of Jan. 15.

“The first step is to get names down,” said Stu Kelly, chairman for MSU Students for Rudy Giuliani. “I met with the College Republicans and other student groups like the Italian Club. (Giuliani) could be the first Italian president.”

For these students and many others, the decision to choose a candidate or campaign for one has not been made yet.

“A candidate who finishes first in New Hampshire will gain support especially among students,” Atkin said. “I would say that of all the information voters will get about these candidates, they’ve only been exposed to about 10 percent. There will be 10 times as much advertising and news stories as they’ve already had the opportunity to see.”