Black President More Likely than Mormon or Atheist

James Joyner · · 93 comments

A recent Gallup poll reveals that Americans are much more likely to elect a black man or a woman president than a Mormon or an old man. More interestingly, they’d rather be governed by a homosexual than an atheist:

Now, these numbers are prospective. People know, for example, that John McCain is an old man and that Rudy Giuliani is divorced and yet they’re doing well in the polls. Still, the ranking of these prospective attributes is interesting.

With all the talk about Romney’s Mormon Problem–with some sizable percentage of Americans thinking the religion he belongs to is a cult–this survey would seem to indicate that it’s less of a problem than being twice-divorced. That’s rather interesting given that there seems to be no real stigma to divorce and re-marriage in the society at large. Further, being 72 years old is massively more problematic, at least theoretically.

I’ve long known that an acknowledged atheist could never win the presidency. But who would have guessed that atheists would poll behind homosexuals? Wonder what Andrew Sullivan would make of that?