Bad news for Bernie: Americans will vote for many types of people, but not socialists

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt)
(Image credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images))

As the 2016 primaries draw near, this cycle's presidential candidates offer voters a diversity of options in terms of age, race, sex, experience, and religion. But Americans aren't equally interested in sampling all those choices.

While nearly 7 in 10 would happily vote a woman into the Oval Office and Latino identity is a positive (especially among Republicans), socialism doesn't get clear support even among self-identified liberal Democrats. Fewer than 40 percent of Democrats of all stripes say they would definitely vote for a socialist candidate like Bernie Sanders, and opposition hits 50 percent among independent voters and 77 percent among Republicans.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.