Judging by a poll of IrishCentral readers, it appears that Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential candidate after the Super Tuesday primaries, has a slight edge over Hillary Clinton among the Irish diaspora.
Out of the 6,798 people who participated in the poll, 3,039, or 45%, said they would vote for Trump. Keen for team Hillary were 41% of the participants (2,768), and 991 of the voters, or 15%, said they would not support either candidate.
The majority of those who took the poll – 5,389 – were based in the US. This group of voters, Irish America, were mostly in favor of Donald Trump, who secured 52% of their votes. Hillary got 34% of the votes in the US, while 13% replied that they wouldn’t vote for either candidate.
Perhaps most surprising was New York state, where Hillary Clinton served as Senator for New York form 2001 to 2009. Eighty per-cent of the 1,845 readers who voted from New York said they would support Donald Trump, while only 15% said Clinton would have their vote.
Trump also won handily in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Oklahoma. Clinton got the majority of votes in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, Washington, Iowa, Michigan and Illinois. Only in Oregon, Utah, Alaska, Alabama, Mississippi, and Bernie Sanders’ state of Vermont did the majority of voters say they would not back either candidate.
Outside of the US, in the nearly 60 countries from which readers participated in the poll, Clinton was the winner. This was especially the case in Ireland, where she snagged 75% of the 499 votes, in the UK where she got 74%, and in Canada where she won 53%. Trump’s most supportive countries outside of the US were Thailand and Mexcio – the latter especially surprising given his campaign promise to make Mexico pay for a border wall and his insulting comments about Mexican immigrants.
When it came to age, Trump earned most of his support from readers ages 55 – 64 and 65+, and also scored some major points from the seven 13 – 17-year-olds who participated. Clinton was backed by readers ages 25 – 34, 35 – 44, and 18 – 24, though a sizable proportion of this last group said they would not choose Clinton or Trump.
The participants were close to evenly split between male and female, with women supporting Clinton more and men slightly more skewed towards Trump.
The comment sections, both on the poll article itself and on social media, were full of attacks against and passionate remarks in favor of the candidates – some, as you might imagine, less respectful and cogent than others.
“I’m not from USA but from where I am, I see that Trump is the laughing stock of the world right now. He is crude, racial, nasty and it would be a sad day to see a proud country like the USA to have him as their leader. The world would be laughing at them as well,” said Jeanette Young on Facebook.
“I think we need a change in America from the same old same old, business as usual politicians,” wrote one commenter under the moniker Tip McConnell. “Donald Trump is clearly not part of the club.”
“I would vote for Hillary Clinton because I think that she has the best chance to defeat the Donald and I think that she can stabilize the country better,” commented Les Redding.
A Bernie Sanders supporter, Benji Kauth, shared his long-term views: “If we don't elect Bernie, we deserve Trump. Lack of political participation and turning a blind eye to greed and cronyism created the opportunity for someone like Trump to get elected. We might need a wake-up call to get people to actually do something about it. Don't do it this election? Maybe the pain of a Trump presidency would get more people to actually vote out these greed-mongers.”
Another reader who was foremost a Sanders supporter, Kathleen Jones, wrote that for her there’d be “no question between Hillary and Trump. She is a brilliant and tough woman with much experience. Trump is a narcissistic ego maniac who is spreading hatred and endangering our relationships with other countries.”
Will the same statistics hold come November if Clinton and Trump earn their parties nominations? We’ll conduct another poll close to then to find out. In the meantime, it’s a very close race.
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