Project One

James Bagley
10/1/14
Overview
My group had the topic of whether sexual orientation would determine a voters attitudes
and opinions of a candidate running for the United States Senate. That is, would people, upon
reading a description of certain candidates determine their opinions on him based on his
sexuality, or of they would even figure out or care to read enough about him to know anything
about him. To answer this question, we had a survey that we administered at a local Wal-Mart.
Standing outside the door of the store, we approached consumers and asked if they would
participate in a short survey about a politician running for office. The group had twenty-five
men and twenty-five women participate in the survey, to make it as accurate as possible.
Hypotheses
My groups hypothesis was that if a voter had a choice between two candidates, one of
them being heterosexual, and another of a different sexuality, that the voter would choose to
favor the heterosexual candidate over the other. That is, if the voter can figure out, based on an
information sheet they were given about the candidate, that they were not straight. We believed
that most of the voters are going to be lazy and not learn about the candidate, or just simply not
care about who is running for office, and just fill out the survey form based on their first few
glances at the information sheet. Also, as the information sheet only says that the candidate is
life partnered and not someone who is not heterosexual, anyone who does read about the
candidates and take in all the information about them, will not necessarily know what that term

means, and assume they are heterosexual. As a result, their responses will be the same or fairly
close to those of the heterosexual candidate.
This hypothesis has a great political significance pertaining to those who are voting.
When a voter is uneducated about what they are doing, then the consequences in the government
are going to be enormous. If this hypothesis turns out to be true, then it wont matter the quality
or character of those we are putting into office. The only thing that will be of any importance is
his charisma in front of the camera. This means that instead of doing our research and sending
the best candidate into office, we are slacking off and sending whoever we deem the coolest.
Because of the voters indifference toward the vote, or simple lack of knowledge, our
government and all its citizens will be forced to deal with a second class government, instead of
one with the best men and women for the job doing what they need to for the greater good of the
community. Information is the key to making informed decisions, and with nobody having the
information, who knows what kind of people will make it into a political office.
Methodology
As stated earlier, this was a survey. In the survey, we, as a group, went to a local WalMart. When all had arrived, we searched out the manager and asked him whether or not it would
be alright if we conducted a survey at his store. He agreed, so long as we were outside of the
store and didnt stand directly in front of the doors. Finding these terms agreeable, we left to the
front of the store. Upon arriving, the surveying commenced. When a customer agreed to
participate in the survey, they would read a one page information sheet about the candidate. This
information sheet had information such as some background information, like his age, marital
status, etc. The information sheet also tells about his formal education, previous work
experiences, examples of how he is involved in community service, and where he stands on

some big issues of our time. After they would read all of these statements about our candidate,
then they would proceed to fill out a short survey about what they read. First, we asked what
they gender is, religious affiliation, and approximately what age they are. After finding out these
bits of information, then they answered these questions. Whether or not he has sufficient
education to be a United States Senator, whether or not he has enough work experience to be
elected a Senator, whether or not the candidate demonstrates strong leadership, if he possesses
the life experiences that will help him understand Utahans, and whether or not they are in
support of more of his stances on certain policies that they oppose. These questions had the
following responses to choose from: Strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly
disagree. When deciding who to choose to survey, we tried to stick to those who were of a
decent voting age, thereby trying to survey people with a little more experience in the area of
voting.
Results
The results to this survey were all quite similar for the most part. Well start with
religion. Nearly everybody surveyed was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints. This can reasonably be assumed because the vast majority of the local population
belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This is an important piece of
information we have here. In the LDS culture, church is a big part of ones life. As a result of
this, the churchs beliefs will be reflected in the way that the surveyed answered their questions.
For those who werent LDS, there were a few who preferred not to disclose their religious
preferences, and a few members of other religious sects, such as Catholicism and Wicca. While
Catholicism is a little similar to Mormonism, thereby producing similar results, the person who

was a Wicca had entirely different beliefs. This shows us that the religious affiliation of a person
has some determination on their political views.
The next question was on gender. Does someones gender have an effect on their results?
The answer is yes. The women in the survey tended to stay more the same in all of their
responses. For the most part, the womens answers are either agree or neutral. However, the
men are a little more diverse. There are many more strongly agrees and disagrees in the mens
side of things. What this suggests though, I dont have enough information to accurately say.
Could the difference be that men tend to be more interested in and know more about politics, so
when they take a survey they will have more diverse and accurate opinions on the matter, while
the women, who dont know as much, will tend to simply agree because what they? Or is it that
women will tend to read more of the survey and figure out what they actually want to put down,
and the men will just not care and fill something out? I dont know.
Another potential influence on the results is age. What age group is going to produce
what results? These results are fairly similar to those of gender. The responses tended to stay
similar based off the gender, and less how they aged. Granted, there was a small amount of
difference as the people got older, and that is that they strayed a little bit closer to the disagree
side, but only a tiny bit. For the most part they were the same.
As a majority, the results were closer to agree than any other answer. Taking into account
that the only information those surveyed knew about the candidate was what was on the
information sheet, I believe we can start to see why this was. With the information given, none
of it really goes against any of the common community standards in this area. There was nothing
especially great about the candidate, but there wasnt anything too wrong with him and his
viewpoints, and for the most part they conformed with the beliefs of the community. As a result

of this, we can see that people have, for the most part, agreed with our candidate and his political
stances. Again, hes nothing exceptionally special, but good enough to get people to agree. And
this is both of the candidates. Now the question we must ask ourselves is, why is this? Consider
the original question. Would sexuality affect a voters decision? We believed it would if a voter
knew about it. This because being anything but heterosexual goes against the social norm of the
area pretty strongly, and as a result people wont react too kindly to something different, that they
oppose. However, not many people read the survey close enough to notice that one of the
candidates was life partnered instead of married. And if they did, there were no questions as to
what that phrase meant. The majority of people were simply in a hurry to get to their grocery
shopping. So I believe that this means that those surveyed had no idea of the sexual orientation
of the candidates, and based their responses solely on the information they understood, like
education, viewpoints, and community background. This means that our question on whether
sexual orientation will change a voters viewpoints remains unanswered.
Conclusion
Overall, we were able to determine that there is a difference between men and women
voters, and those of differing religious affiliations. Though our original question remains
unanswered, we were correct in assuming that most people wouldnt know the candidates sexual
orientation. This means that their answers were based on the other information given them that
they would more easily comprehend. For future groups doing this research, it would be well
advised to make sure that one of the candidates is clearly stated as heterosexual, and the other is
of a different sexuality. If people dont realize that they are both not straight, then the results will
not show the answer to the question. Also, it might be a good idea to only interview a certain

demographic of people, to see if different ages/genders/races/religions of people have any

bearing on what the results of the survey are.