Just exactly who can be president?
Republican contender Ben Carson sparked that debate when he said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he “absolutely would not agree” with electing a Muslim as president.
On that question, Americans are divided.
In a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, most of those surveyed don’t think it’s a realistic possibility, at least at the moment. By 53%-39%, they say a Muslim couldn’t be elected.
Even so, by 49%-40% they said they themselves would vote for a qualified Muslim.
What about other groundbreaking categories?
• By 53%-40%, they would vote for a qualified atheist. Notably, resistance to an atheist as president is as strong as resistance to a Muslim.
• By 93%-3%, they would vote for a qualified Catholic. The 2016 field includes several Catholics, among them Republicans Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio, and Democrat Martin O’Malley.
• By 95%-4%, they would vote for a qualified woman. That’s presumably good news for Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Carly Fiorina.
The nationwide poll of 1,000 likely voters, taken by phone from Thursday through Monday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Democrats are much more likely to say they would vote a Muslim than Republicans are, 63% compared with 26%. But there is only a small partisan difference on openness to voting for a woman: 97% of Democrats and 92% of Republicans say they would.
“I would vote for anybody that is going to be in the best interest of the country,” says Tyler Sutherland, 24, a U.S. Army officer based in Manhattan, Kan., who was among those surveyed. “I don’t care what religion they are, what race they are, what they align with, as long as I think they’re doing the right thing.”
But Nina Neece, 56, of Turlock, Calif., says she wouldn’t vote for a Muslim and says she believes President Obama is a Muslim; he is in fact a Christian.
“This country was founded on Christian values and it needs to stay that way,” she said in a follow-up interview. “The Muslims have their country. They can stay where they’re at. They don’t need to be pushing it down our throat.”
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