b'Pot and Politics: Hashing out What InfluencesState Policy on MarijuanaJett Voorhees, Department of Political ScienceFaculty Sponsor: Dr. James LaPlant, Department of Political ScienceThis quantitative study was created to examine potential factors which influence the level of decriminalization of marijuana in each of the states, with the inclusion of the District of Columbia. Over the past twenty years, marijuana decriminalization has been a growing trend ever since it was first decriminalized for medical use by California in 1996. Since then, nearly all states have decided to decriminalize marijuana to some level of medical allowance or to even permit full recreational use. In an attempt to explain this growing diffusion of marijuana policy, seven independent variables have been selected to find a correlation with the dependent variable, marijuana decriminalization. These variables are the percentage of white residents by state, the percentage of African Americans by state, the unemployment rate by state, the region of each state, the percent evangelical Christian by state, the percent of the Trump vote by state, and the percentage of the population with a bachelors degree or higher by state. These variables were tested using a correlation analysis, multiple scatterplot analyses, and an analysis of variance for the regional variable. Five of the independent variables were found to have statistical significance in correlation to the dependent variable: the unemployment rate, the percent evangelized Christian, the Trump vote, region, and the percent of the population with a bachelors degree or higher. Both independent variables for race were found to be not significant in correlation to the level of marijuana decriminalization by state. Regional differences could be observed with the highest mean scores of decriminalization occurring in the West and North East. The results of this study could suggest that party alignment and other various socioeconomic factors have a large effect on state legislation regarding marijuana.73'