Americans are extremely skeptical that any presidential candidate will listen to voters over money
Only 11 percent of likely voters pick themselves as presidential candidates' top influence.
A new Rasmussen poll asked respondents to choose between high-dollar donors, Republican and Democratic leadership, and the voting public as the group to which candidates pay most attention. Some 61 percent named donors as the most influential group, while two in 10 picked party leadership and one in 10 selected ordinary voters.
The same survey reveals that half of likely voters believe it is impossible "to run for president in today’s world without having ties to any lobbyists and special interest groups," while another poll released Tuesday found a majority of Americans are unhappy with the selection of viable 2016 candidates.
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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.
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