4% Are More Likely to Vote for a Celebrity Who Is Running for Office
Singer Clay Aiken, who got his start on the “American Idol” TV program, made headlines last week when he announced he is running for Congress in North Carolina, but very few consider a candidate’s celebrity a deciding factor to their vote.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds, in fact, that only four percent (4%) of Likely U.S. Voters say they would be more likely to vote for a prominent entertainer who runs for public office. Forty-two percent (42%) say they would be less likely to vote for an entertainer, while 52% say the candidate’s profession and prominence would have no influence on their vote. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on February 6-7, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.