Polls On Profanity In Politics
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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) Getty Images After President Trump’s State of the Union speech, Politico ran a story about profanity-laced reactions to the speech from some Democrats. According to the piece, firebrand Texan Jasmine Crockett let it rip with the f-word, but so, too, did a handful of her Democratic colleagues. Last week The Hill followed up with a story about Democratic hopefuls embracing the F-bomb on the campaign trail. The strategy is to show Democrats’ deep anger and to give them an aura of authenticity to help them reconnect with working class voters. Will it work? What do the polls tell us? Cursing is hardly new in politics. Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are no stranger to what we used to call bad language. When Joe Biden whispered to President Obama that the Obamacare signing was a “big f—ing deal,” most people shrugged. In 1980, Gallup asked whether Americans would object strongly to some presidential behaviors, including using tranquilizers occasionally (36% did), seeing a psychiatrist (30%), wearing jeans occasionally in the Oval Office (21%) and having a cocktail before dinner each night (14%). A third said they would object strongly if a president used profane language in private (italics mine). LBJ’s and Richard Nixon’s fondness for expletives was not widely known until tapes from their tenures came out, and the press generally didn’t write about private behavior. Pollsters have paid little sustained attention to people’s attitudes about profanity so no trend data exist. But there are patterns. In 1993, Princeton Survey Research Associates asked whether certain rules of behavior guided them and their families, 64% said the rule “not to curse or use profanity” applied to their family, while nearly three in ten said it did not. When asked about other people, only 15% said nearly everyone…
Filed under: News - @ May 5, 2025 10:22 pm