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Back in February 2007, USA Today/Gallup asked Americans the following question:
"Between now
and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the
qualifications of presidential candidates -- their education, age,
religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally
well-qualified person for president who happened to be 72 years old, would you vote for that person?"
42% of people said "no" and 15% were undecided. That means that if
their party nominated a 72 year-old, 3 out of 7 people would vote for
somebody else. In the same poll, 48-50% of people supported Obama or
Hillary in a November election against McCain. That would lead a person
to believe that, since 42% of people should technically vote against
McCain solely because of his age, only 6-8% of people actually
supported Obama or Hillary. In fact, I think it's much easier to vote
for McCain when you attach a name to his age... people were averse to
voting for a 72 year-old, but plenty of people were willing to vote for
McCain.
Are we serious? In a perfect world, I think we'd remove all of the
faces from political elections. If we only knew a candidate's political
stances and credentials (and we never saw their faces until after they
get elected), I think more people would dismiss McCain just because
they don't want to vote for a guy who'd be 80 years old by the time he
finishes his second term. What do you think?
I like looking at data and studies... they cast a lot of light on
reality. I've noticed plenty of people say things like "I don't care
about the numbers, this is what my experience says"... but I don't
think that any single person's experience is as valuable as the
experience of the thousands of people involved in the study. If we
weren't willing to vote for a 72 year-old, then why were we willing to
vote for McCain?
I like McCain... I won't vote for him (not because of his age, but
because of his stance on the issues), but I do like him. I think that
he's better than Hillary and that he's not as good as Obama... but
that's irrelevant. The question here is about numbers; if we weren't
willing to vote for a 72 year-old, then why were we willing to vote for
McCain? |
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