Sad as it makes us to say it, the Kanye West 2020 presidential campaign is off to an incredibly slow start, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.
Half of those polled by YouGov this week said they have a “strongly unfavorable” opinion of the noted fresh juice advocate. Only 13 percent said they have a very favorable or even somewhat favorable view of West.
Told that West is planning a run to become President of the United States of America in 2020, only six percent said they’d consider voting for him, while 65 percent would prefer he not run. Twenty percent would like to see him run, but wouldn’t consider voting for him.
West first announced his campaign to become leader of the free world during his acceptance of the Video Vanguard Award at the VMAs on Sunday. “I have decided in 2020 to run for president,” he said to raucous cheers from the crowd.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest has since said that he is looking “forward to seeing what slogan he chooses to embroider on his campaign hat.” A college student in Maryland filed paperwork to create a political action committee. “[The PAC] is not just a joke,” he said.
While many presidential contenders struggle to find the perfect theme song, West has the advantage of dipping into his own back catalog. Forty percent of Americans willing to weigh on West’s campaign theme options opted for “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.” Thirty-one percent picked “Gold Digger,” 17 percent picked “Stronger,” and fewer than 10 percent casted their vote for either “Jesus Walks” or “All Day.”
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said earlier this week that he would embrace the opportunity to run against West, and it’s easy to understand why. Asked who they thought would make a better president, 41 percent said Trump and 8 percent said West. Forty-eight percent said neither.
So maybe #Kanye2020 isn’t quite shaping up quite the way West’s supporters want. But the the poll’s results do show just how fed up some Americans, particularly Republicans, are with the current political establishment. Asked whether they’d vote for a long-serving Washington politician or a new-to-politics celebrity — assuming both held similar views — Americans were only 13 points more likely to go with the career politician. Republicans, probably with Trump in mind, preferred the celebrity candidate by a 9-point margin.
Of course, the official position of HuffPost Entertainment is more than clear.
Wednesday marked the 10-year anniversary of West stating on air that then-U.S. President George W. Bush did not care about black people.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Sept. 1-2 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.
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