Most Republicans would still vote for a presidential candidate that they thought "would lie to cover up the truth," according to a new poll from Utah's The Deseret News.
Deseret News asked 1,000 adults in the U.S., along with an oversample of 250 Mormons, and mostly concerned voters' views on honesty and the Ten Commandments. One of the questions asked was whether a respondent would vote for a presidential candidate they agreed with on most issues if they thought the candidate would lie.
- 55 percent of Republicans would.
- 30 percent of Democrats would.
- 27 percent of independents would.
When asked the same question about a gubernatorial candidate, Republican were much less likely to support a candidate who lies, on par with Democrats and independents:
- 29 percent of Republicans would vote for such a candidate.
- 29 percent of Democrats would.
- 31 percent of independents would.
"Even if they wouldn't want him as a pastor, if they wouldn't like a guy with [Republican President Donald] Trump's proclivities toward dissembling in their personal lives, he seems to be a reliable servant to their political, ideological ambitions," Tom Wood, an assistant professor of political science at Ohio State University, told the newspaper.
"You might be slightly less optimistic about a candidate (caught lying) but you would still support him or her as a partisan obligation," he said.
"Trump is the person who everyone is thinking about (in the survey) and Democrats revile him. Of course they're going to say, 'No. I wouldn't take a liar,'" said Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University. "But if it was someone promoting democratic policies, it's safe to assume Democrats would change their tune a little bit."
She added, "It's not just about whether a politician is lying or not. It's whether he's lying on my behalf."
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