{"id":9984,"date":"2007-02-20T12:31:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-20T17:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9984.html"},"modified":"2007-02-20T12:31:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-20T17:31:00","slug":"what-kind-of-people-wont-americans-vote-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/what-kind-of-people-wont-americans-vote-for\/","title":{"rendered":"What kind of people won’t Americans vote for?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For too many Americans, certain presidential candidates are immediately disqualified for consideration, regardless of their party, ideas, or agenda. Gallup’s latest poll<\/a> shows what kinds of people are the “wrong” kinds of candidates. (via Greg Sargent<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Poll respondents were asked, If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be …, would you vote for that person?<\/p>\n

Catholic — 95% would vote for, 4% would not
\nBlack — 94% would vote for, 5% would not
\nJewish — 92% would vote for, 7% would not
\nA woman — 88% would vote for, 11% would not
\nHispanic — 87% would vote for, 12% would not
\nMormon — 72% would vote for, 24% would not
\nMarried for the third time — 67% would vote for, 30% would not
\n72 years of age — 57% would vote for, 42% would not
\nA homosexual — 55% would vote for, 43% would not
\nAn atheist — 45% would vote for, 53% would not<\/p>\n

Now, I suspect the numbers are actually worse than this suggests. The Gallup results show voters willing to discriminate against all kinds of people, but it’s worth noting that a fair number of Americans probably harbor these same prejudices, but are reluctant to admit it to a pollster.<\/p>\n

Moreover, I also imagine that some of this is likely to change. A voter may express discomfort with a candidate who’s been married three times, but if that same voter really likes Giuliani, would he or she vote for him anyway? Maybe.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, even if we accept the results at face value, this has to be discouraging news for the three Republican front-runners. Indeed, the Mormon (Romney) did surprisingly well against the third-time husband (Giuliani) and the 72-year-old candidate (McCain). As for Dems, their diverse field is sitting pretty, with a black candidate (Obama), woman (Clinton), and Hispanic (Richardson) beating out all of the GOP’s problematic traits.<\/p>\n

For that matter, I can’t tell if it’s encouraging or discouraging that gays and septuagenarians do almost equally badly.
\n
\nWhile we’re on the topic, I thought I’d add that there’s an ideological difference driving the results. Conservatives are far more likely to reject a candidate based on one of the traits Gallup included in the poll.<\/p>\n

Willingness to Vote for Non-Traditional Presidential Candidates by Political Ideology<\/p>\n

Catholic — Liberal 97%, Moderate 95%, Conservative 94%
\nBlack — Liberal 95%, Moderate 94%, Conservative 92%
\nJewish — Liberal 93%, Moderate 91%, Conservative 91%
\nA woman — Liberal 96%, Moderate 89%, Conservative 82%
\nHispanic — Liberal 92%, Moderate 87%, Conservative 84%
\nMormon — Liberal 75%, Moderate 77%, Conservative 66%
\nMarried for the third time — Liberal 74%, Moderate 71%, Conservative 60%
\n72 years of age — Liberal 59%, Moderate 52%, Conservative 63%
\nA homosexual — Liberal 81%, Moderate 57%, Conservative 36%
\nAn atheist — Liberal 67%, Moderate 48%, Conservative 29%<\/p>\n

Yes, even among liberals, atheists are that<\/i> unpopular.<\/p>\n

I’m not going anywhere special with all of this; I just thought it was interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For too many Americans, certain presidential candidates are immediately disqualified for consideration, regardless of their party, ideas, or agenda. Gallup’s latest poll shows what kinds of people are the “wrong” kinds of candidates. (via Greg Sargent) Poll respondents were asked, If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be …, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}