Another day, another study that purports to show that Americans won’t support a female candidate. Once again this only focuses on the negative, failing to take into account that some people (like me) might be MORE likely to vote for a woman.
And while it’s hard to judge a study from a press release, the basic methodology seems totally sketchball. Basically they asked a control group whether four things made them angry (gas prices, athlete pay, ceo pay, and pollution), then asked another group whether a woman serving as president bothered them, followed by all those other statements. Overall anger went up by a lot, so they conclude that about a quarter of the population gets upset by the idea of a woman being president.
Might I suggest that the word pissing people off is not “woman,” but “president”? I know I get pissed off when I think about the current president. Besides that though, the introduction of politics at all into things might tend to make people more angry. Maybe people aren’t personally upset about those issues, but do expect the government to do more to try to solve them. Maybe they are libertarians and just get mad when you mention the government. (Okay, libertarians are mad about everything either way.) This just doesn’t seem like a study that pinpoints much of anything, and it shouldn’t be played up as proof that Americans are secretly sexist.
3 Comments
There is some hesitation
I think the hesitancy to vote for a woman president is real. There are a lot of men that would not vote for a woman under any circumstance. Luckily they are mostly Republicans that would not vote for a Democratic male, either. It might be different for women because many would jump at the chance to vote FOR a woman. As would I.
Nancy Pelosi can do a lot to change that, and she already has begun to do so. Pelosi may be Senator Clinton’s biggest ally, even if Pelosi never endorses her. I do think the US is ready to elect a woman president, and some day even a female governor or congresswoman from Iowa – can you imagine?
Women candidates for Congress did not do as well as male candidates in 2006, and some think that is because of the uncertainty of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (and Iran, etc.). There may be something to it, and that may be why Senator Clinton has been such a terrible right-wing hawk.
I really want to support a woman for president, but I cannot support Senator Clinton until she admits that the Iraq invasion was a mistake from the get-go. Just saying the war was handled poorly or that she would have voted differently had she known . . . is not good enough. She knew in 2002 that it was a trumped-up war, but she supported it because she thought it would help her politically. If she really thought the Iraq invasion was a good idea in 2002 and early 2003, then we definitely do not want her to get a shot at the White House.
Where is her mea culpa, and Biden’s, Kerry’s, etc.?
tom Mon 22 Jan 10:33 PM
Mea Culpas
John Kerry has been pretty good about it. I think all the others have been more of the “Bush screwed it up” variety, which doesn’t work for me either. I’m not really sure where Dodd is on it, but I’m fairly confident that the other Senators (Edwards excluded obviously) haven’t gotten there yet.
drew-miller Tue 23 Jan 1:54 AM
woman as president
At this point, there has been so much talk about Hillary running for president, what person taking such a poll wouldn’t make the connection in their minds, at least subconsciously, that “female candidate” = “Hillary”? How can such polls not be tainted by Hillary’s high negativity numbers?
I could certainly vote for a woman for president if she is the best candidate, but I won’t vote for a candidate just because she is a woman. I just can’t see how that wouldn’t be sexist. I would not want a promotion or other sort of advancement to be based on my gender (which is female, btw)—that would just devalue my genuine qualifications. We owe it to both women and men to judge them based on their individual merits.
kn Sun 28 Jan 9:54 PM