” … A 1999 Gallup poll asked Americans whether they would vote for a well-qualified presidential candidate of their own party who happened to belong to one of the following groups: Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, Mormon, black, woman, gay, or atheist. Only 49 percent of Americans said they would vote for an atheist candidate, by far the lowest percentage of all the groups. By contrast, 79 percent said they would vote for a Mormon, and even 59 percent said they would vote for a gay candidate. All the other categories had better than 90 percent agreement.
In 2007, Gallup asked the same question again. In this more recent poll, Mormons’ popularity dropped to 72 percent, but again, the only category that a majority of voters refused to even consider was atheists. … “
at AlerNet
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Is this a rhetorical question? Cuz it seems fairly obvious to me.
I wonder if the results would have been more positive with a word like ‘nonbeliever’. The word ‘atheist’ was used in the past in a way that contaminated it with an inaccurate definition and overtones of negative personality traits. I hope it is being reclaimed now with a more accurate definition, or range of definitions, but I don’t think the change in people’s perception of what it means is complete yet.