As Americans head to the polls today for the 2014 midterm elections, many voters will have one prominent issue in mind as they pull the lever – shitty anime and those who like it.

“I actually changed my mind in the last couple of days,” said Darrell Franks of Dallas, Texas. Franks will be voting in the hotly contested race for Texas gubernatorial election between Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott.

“One of the latest political ads revealed that Wendy Davis scored Cross Ange an 8 on MyAnimeList. I can’t trust someone like that in the governor’s office!”

Darrell Franks is not alone. The 2014 election cycle represents a crucial juncture in the balance of power in Washington. With President Obama’s approval rating sagging, Democrats are trying to hang on as they are projected to lose the Senate. The campaigning has been fierce and oftentimes dirty.

“David Perdue thinks he knows mecha anime,” a political advertisement for the Georgia senatorial race stated while showing a blog post in which Perdue praised Gundam 00 and Aquarion Evol. “But according to his own Anime Planet account, he hasn’t even watched Neon Genesis Evangelion. David Perdue: wrong on mecha, wrong on Georgia.”

On the other side of the country, a debate between House of Representatives candidates Stewart Mills and Rick Nolan in Minnesota’s 8th District turned ugly after Mills accused Nolan of “liking K-ON!“.

“In today’s harsh political atmosphere, a candidate cannot like shitty anime and expect to get away with it,” political analyst Gary Supaik tells Anime Maru.

Indeed, in the weeks leading up to the elections, several candidates in battleground states have gone to great lengths to hide their various guilty pleasures and otherwise shitty taste in anime by closing accounts on several anime scoring sites. Though not all candidates were so eager to do so. After falling several points behind Republican challenger Cory Gardener, incumbent Colorado Senator Mark Udall finally shut down his Tumblr dedicated to Fantasista Doll.

Another issue facing Democrats in several key races is the question of whether or not to back President Obama’s controversial policies. Earlier this year the President declared Homura to be Best Madoka, but many Democrats in heavily Mami, Sayaka, and Madoka states have attempted to distance themselves from the President’s policies, downplaying the declaration as a statement of individual preference. Some even publicly broke with Obama’s line; New Hampshire senatorial candidate Jeanne Shaheen went as far as to state “frankly, the President’s waifu is shit.”

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