I think that she said she'd see a black man elected president before she'd see a woman in the White House. This year-old Gallop survey suggests she could be right. Although most Americans said that they were willing to elect a woman and most that they were willing to elect a black, fewer supported a woman in the White House. And a few more won't vote for a Morman. And a lot seemed to worry about candidate age.
- 94% say they'd vote for a black (84% "comfortably" and 9% "with reservations)
- 88% say they'd vote for a woman (78% "comfortably" and 10% "with reservations)
- 72% say they'd vote for a Morman (58% "comfortably" and 14% "with reservations)
- 57% say they'd vote for someone 72 years old (43% "comfortably" and 15% "with reservations)
- 55% say they'd vote for a homosexual
- 45% say they'd vote for an atheist
Blacks have made more progress than women since 1967. Back then, women edged out blacks as an acceptable candidate, but the margin of error made it a virtual tie (57% to 53%). One wonders when Gallup will conduct the poll again.
We all know that polls like this aren't perfect. Similar polls in 1962 said that Americans wouldn't vote for a Catholic for president, but we did. And although America has not had a woman as an elected national leader, other countries have: the Presidents of Finland, Indonesia, Ireland, Latvia, Panama, the Philippines, Sri Lanka; the Prime Ministers of Bangladesh, Britain, Finland, New Zealand, Peru, Sâo Tom and Príncipe; the Vice Presidents of Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Gambia , Palau, Taiwan; and the Governor-Generals of he Bahamas, Canada , Saint Lucia, New Zealand.
There were 114.1 million women of voting age in 2006 compared to only 25.7 million blacks. So which group seems more accepted as a president to you, given these relative numbers?
See Milestones for Women In American Politics; excerpt from "Unbought and Unbossed" - Shirley Chisholm Announces Candidacy (2:34); and Barbara Jordan gives the keynote at the 1976 Democratic National Convention.
Comments
Hi Kathy,
What does strike even more the atheist secularist in me is the numbers which say they would not vote for an atheist. This alledgedly makes of the USA a very rare exception within Western democracies. It might be a secular country by law (and that I would even argue), it is barely anything else than a de facto Christian country.
You said that “Blacks have made more progress than women since 1967.” I’m not sure that’s true.
Women hold 16 Senate seats and 8 governorships, whereas there is only one African-American senator (Barack Obama), and only a single African-American governor (Deval Patrick of Massachusetts).
Given that African Americans comprise 13.1% of the population, with some simple math you’ll see that women are much closer to proportional representation than blacks.
Though both are still greatly underrepresented, African Americans do better than women in House seats in terms of proportional representation. Women have 74 House seats and blacks 38 out of 435 total. I’ll bet this has to do with the deliberate drawing of majority black districts. Obviously it would be impossible to draw such districts to help women get closer to proportional representation.
Hi, Alphast — yes, Europe is far more “non-religious” than the US.
And Vas, you are correct RE hard numbers. Don’t know if that’s because people run and lose or because they don’t run. Or because we sometimes tell pollsters what we think they want to hear.
Remember, though, that the question was about the *presidency* … not voting for a person in general.
I WANT BARACK OBAMA TO WIN