NEW POLL FINDS FOR FIRST TIME A MAJORITY OF AMERICANS READY TO ELECT A FEMALE PRESIDENT WITHIN NEXT FIVE YEARS
Three Out of Four are Comfortable with a Woman President, and Half Say they are very comfortable
Majority Believe a Woman President would be as Good or Better Than a Man at Handling Issues of Foreign Policy, Homeland Security and the Economy
NEW YORK February 16, 2007 – As the nation heads into Presidents’ Day weekend, half of Americans are very comfortable with a female president and a majority feel the country will be ready to elect her within the next five years, according to a poll conducted by GfKRoper Public Affairs and commissioned by The White House Project, a national non-partisan organization created to advance women's leadership across sectors, including the U.S. presidency.
The poll showed that overwhelming majorities of Americans continue to believe that a women president would be as good as or better than a man at leading on the issues of foreign policy (78%), homeland security (77%) and the economy (88%).
“From the Governorship to the White House, traditionally the areas of national security and the economy have kept women from executive leadership,” said Marie Wilson, president of The White House Project. “To see the overwhelming comfort level with women handling these non-traditional areas is a real sea change and bodes well for women seeking the presidency.”
The poll, which tested the public’s attitudes about women’s leadership across sectors, also found that women express great confidence and trust in women in positions of leadership such as Secretary of State (95%), Speaker of House (92%), Member of Congress (95%), head of a large financial institution (96%), and major University President (94%).
Since The White House Project’s last poll in 2005, women continued their ascent to leadership roles affecting every aspect of Americans’ lives:
• U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) became the nation’s first female Speaker of the House, putting her third in line for the presidency;
• Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become the Bush Administration’s day to day point person on its Iraq policy;
• U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) announced her candidacy for president in 2008 and is considered the Democratic front-runner;
• Drew Gilpin Faust was named the first female President of Harvard University, the nation’s premiere higher education institution;
• Chile, Liberia, Germany and Jamaica elected their first female heads-of-state; and
• Indra Nooyi became Chairman and CEO of Pepsi, Inc., making her the top-ranked woman in the Fortune 500.
Since the September 2005 poll, there has been a slight downturn in the large majorities of Americans who felt comfortable with a woman President of the United States, from 79% in September 2005 to 74% in February 2007.
“The small decline in the number of Americans who feel personally comfortable having a woman President may be because the idea has gone from the abstract to the reality—with a woman currently running for President,” said Annie Weber, Senior Vice President at Roper Public Affairs, a division of Gfk. “However, on all the issues asked about in the survey- including foreign policy, homeland security, the economy and the other issues- it is clear that the American public is confident that a woman can do the job.”
The White House Project poll was conducted from February 9-11, 2007, by Roper Public Affairs. Telephone interviews were conducted with a representative random sample of 1,004 American adults [524 female adults and 480 male adults]. The margin of sampling error for this survey is +/- 3 percentage points.
For more information on the poll, contact Lindsay Clinton at The White House Project at 212-261-4400.
