Majority of Americans would vote for gay Presidential candidate
Is America ready to paint the White House pink?
The results of new poll from Zogby International suggest that the majority of Americans would vote for an openly gay President and that even more would support an openly gay Vice-Presidential candidate or cabinet secretary.
According to a press release analyzing the Zogby Poll’s discoveries, the Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute (GLLI) for which Zogby conducted the poll, reports that more than six in ten US voters say they could support an openly gay candidate for President of the United States, and 70% say they’d support the appointment of an openly gay cabinet secretary.
Sixty-six percent of poll respondents said they could support an openly gay Vice-Presidential candidate, while 69% said a gay candidate for US Senate could get their vote.
The poll of 1,089 adults was conducted August 13 to 15 for the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute (GLLI), a non-partisan leadership development organisation.
“These results prove that most Americans want to be fair to gay people,” said Chuck Wolfe, president and CEO of GLLI.
“Our aspiration is to always see each other as individuals first, and though we may not always succeed at that, our underlying fairness and decency means that one day soon we will. This marks tremendous progress for our community and for the voting public.”
The poll results come just a week after an openly gay congressional candidate, Jared Polis, won his Democratic primary in Colorado.
If Polis wins the general election in November, he would become the first non-incumbent, openly gay man ever elected to Congress.
More than 415 openly LGBT elected officials serve at every level of government throughout the United States, a ten-fold increase in just the last two decades.
At the federal level, five openly gay or lesbian Members have served in the US House of Representatives, including current Representatives Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Barney Frank of Massachusetts. Both are Democrats.
No openly LGBT candidate has yet been elected to the US Senate.
© 2008 GayWired; All Rights Reserved.
