If you're interested in political campaigns and also a fan of the West Wing, you'll find this Zogby poll interesting. The poll shows Democrat Matthew Santos well ahead of Republican Arnold Vinick, 44% to 28%. Vinick has already wrapped up the Republican nomination, but we won't know until next week at the earliest if Santos comes from behind to win the Democratic nomination.
If this were poll were based strictly on the demographics of current West Wing viewers I would not be surprised by these numbers at all. I suspect most viewers are progressive Democrats, since the show has featured a Democrat as president for all six of the seasons it has been on the air. However, Zogby says he weighted the poll results to reflect the partisan breakdown of the U.S. Presumably this is to make the race more realistic, but it's not clear to me if this is how NBC, Warner, and the producers of the show would want to see the numbers broken down. On the one hand, The West Wing has a huge viewer base (over 15 million for many episodes), and you would think the producers would want to know which candidate current viewers prefer before making a decision on who becomes president next season. On the other hand, if they wanted to bring in more conservative viewers they might decide that it is more appropriate (and more realistic?) to choose a conservative Republican as the next president. However, Vinick, a pro-choice atheist from California (vaguely similar to Arnold), doesn't quite fit the bill in that regard.
Other interesting stats from the Zogby poll:
- There was a huge gender gap: Santos and Vinick are tied among men, but Santos holds a big lead among women, 53% to 22%.
- Vinick has weak Republican support. Santos has the support of 74% of Democratic viewers, while Vinick only has 49% of Republicans.
- When viewers were asked to put aside their own political preferences and choose which character would make for a more interesting show, Santos still holds the lead, 44% to 31% for Vinick.
Quote from John Zogby:
“Expect to see Vinick work to reach out to women as the campaign season wears on.
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The character of Santos is annoying me. He's arrogant. He only wants to win on his terms ignoring the party. He only wants to run a campaign on being hispanic. That all antagonizes me. If he is President on the rest of the series it will be a show that should only be shown on the Spanish Speaking stations. Unreal.
Hispaniics in reality wont be the majority in this country until 2050,
Santos does come across as a bit arrogant sometimes, but I think that is just a function of his confidence and dedication to principles. I doesn't matter that hispanics are not a majority in this country; people in the U.S. are more open minded than you think. People are ready for a hispanic president if s/he stands for the right principles, and having one even on a TV series would be a good start.