we're in the final stretch of the 2023 election season with candidates pounding the pavement trying to turn out the vote early in-person voting has already begun Governor Murphy placing his ballot on Saturday the first official day of in-person voting locations are open in each County mailin ballots can now also be submitted at dropboxes that are also scattered around each County and in these final days of campaigning for New Jersey legislators who are all on the ballot next Tuesday November 7th one camp campaign slogan has picked up steam among Republicans parental rights it's a topic that NJ Spotlight news education and child welfare writer Hanna gross has covered quite a bit as it's played out in schools and school board debates over the last year she's with me now to talk about how parental choice is playing in this upcoming election Hannah so good to have you sitting down with me today um when we hear this term parental controls parental Choice something you've been reporting about a lot of recently it's really become somewhat of a battlecry particularly for Republicans during this election cycle how is it playing out for voters what's happening generally for voters when they hear that term parental Choice yeah thank you so much for having me so recent polling from fdu shows that if voters are primed by asking about parental choice and parental control before they pick which candidate they prefer they're more likely to favor the Republican candidate but because there's such a big impact from that priming question it also shows that voters might not already be thinking about parental control so it's going to depend if they're thinking about it what the results are at the polls on Election Day and of course the polls are just trying to gauge right what's going to happen how energized are voters what are the key issues that are driving them out it's a topic that you've been covering a lot what does it mean what what when people call for more parental Choice more parental control what are they asking for generally yeah so a lot of this movement has been focused on Parental Control in schools and more involvement of parents or caregivers um which has widespread support when you talk about parents being involved in a children's education but when you look at some of the policies that fall under this umbrella especially from the advocates for it on the more conservative right these policies like um getting rid of books that are in school libraries and also notifying parents of a child's gender identity even if the child might not want that those policies have far less support so it's something that um your reporting shows Once people really start to understand what those policies are we start to see those numbers change in terms of their support for it um just break down a little bit what fdu recently released a poll can you help us understand what they saw in terms of how they presented the issue and where voters really stand yeah so the fdu poll really just asked this priming question um asking do you support parental control and after that they asked about candidate preference but following this polling from fdu the njaa the state's teachers union and also PPP public policy polling they came out with another fir another polling um that look directly at the issues and that poll found that there was not widespread support for book bands and not widespread support for Parental notification of gender identity um which they phrased as forced outing that would have a negative impact on children and to be clear we're talking G we're talking most specifically about lgbtq plus books that there have been renewed calls over the last few years to have uh Books banned from public libraries and school libraries when we talk about what's going to happen it's it's been really difficult to really gauge how these elections go we've seen polls falter in the last few years do we have a sense of whether or not this has been a really strong uh kind of PLL for voters to get out to be energized enough to get out to the polls when we know there's likely to be low voter turnout yeah so it is likely going to be a low turnout election because it is an off year and in those slow turnout elections people are generally more concerned about turning out their base um and so for Republicans that has been focused a lot on parental rights and parental control as an issue to Rally the base the polling from fdu has shown that it leads to widespread support among Independence um but it's unclear if these Independents will turn out on Election Day when much of the Outreach is focusing on rallying the base Hannah gross great reporting as always thank you thank you for having me