SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco’s WPIX-TV recently conducted a news poll about affirmative action, and the results are revealing interesting insight into those who support the race-based policy.

The Survey USA News Poll sponsored by the television station asked 500 California adults a series of four questions about affirmative action, and the overall results revealed the vast majority of adults oppose college admissions prioritized by race.

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

“If a white applicant and an African American applicant are being considered, should they be treated identically? Should the white student be given preference? Or should the African American student be given preference?” one of the questions asked.

The results are broken down by a variety of demographics, but a total of 78 percent believe both the white student and black student should be treated the same.

The breakdown, however, is where the responses get interesting.

Eighty-one percent of white people surveyed said the students should be treated equally, while 79 percent of black respondents said the same. But of those who consider themselves strong Democrats, only 65 percent believe black and white students should be admitted to college on the same level playing field.

A whopping 26 percent of strong Democrats think the black student should be given preferential treatment.

In other words, more folks on the far left think black people need a helping hand to get into college than the black people who would actually benefit from an affirmative action policy.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

It was a similar situation when examined from the perspective of ideology.

Of those surveyed who consider themselves very liberal, 21 percent think black students should be admitted before white students, as opposed to only 14 percent of blacks.

Survey USA asked the same questions about Latino and Asian American students.

For Latinos, 20 percent of the very liberal crowd believe they should be given preference over white students, while only 10 percent of those surveyed who consider themselves Hispanic agreed.

The findings follow a report in The New York Times detailing the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on discriminatory affirmative action policies used by some American universities.

The Times cited an internal announcement recently distributed to the Justice Department’s civil rights division detailing a new project involving “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”

Roger Clegg, who worked in the civil rights division during the Regan and H.W. Bush administrations, described the move as “welcome” and “long overdue.”

“The civil rights laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it is frequently the case that not only are white discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans as well,” he said.

Based on the California survey results, it seems that sort of discrimination is backed mostly by liberals and self-declared strong Democrats.

Those groups were much more likely to support admissions policies that favor minorities over whites, unless the minorities are Asian.

When asked “if a white applicant for college and an Asian American applicant for college are being considered for acceptance at a state university, should the two applicants be treated identically?” liberal Democrats seemed much less supportive than they were for the same policy promoting blacks or Latinos.

A mere 7 percent of the very liberal responded that Asians should be given preference over whites, and no strong Democrats supported the Asians first perspective. By contrast, about 8 percent of Asians backed affirmative action for those of their own race.