Twenty-one percent of Americans said they spent more time watching the impeachment hearings than entertainment shows or sports events
SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. – November 22, 2019 – By 74 to 19 percent, the American public said they would rather their preferred candidate win the 2020 presidential election than their favorite team win the Super Bowl or World Series.
However, 28 percent of males said they would rather see their favorite team win the championship than have their favorite candidate win the 2020 presidential election – while 64 percent said they would prefer their favorite candidate to win. Another 8 percent said they did not know or had no opinion.
Among women, only 11 percent said they would prefer their team to win, with 84% preferring their candidate to win the presidential election. The remaining five percent did not know or had no opinion.
These are the findings of a Seton Hall Sports Poll conducted this week of 712 adults on landlines and cellphones across the country. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.7 percent.
“In the last two presidential elections voter turnout has been between 58 and 60 percent,” said Rick Gentile, director of the Seton Hall Sports Poll, which is sponsored by the Sharkey Institute within the Stillman School of Business. “It shouldn’t be a surprise that that many men care more about the outcome of a baseball or a football season than the political future of the country – but it is alarming.”
Presidential Candidate or Championship, By Education Level
The more education the respondents had, the more strongly they felt about the election results. For those with less than a high school education, 55 percent said they would prefer their favorite “presidential candidate to win,” while 31 percent said they would prefer their team to win (14 percent did not know/had no opinion).
For those who graduated college, 81 percent said they would prefer their favorite “presidential candidate to win,” while only 16 percent of college grads said they would prefer their sports team to win the Super Bowl or the World Series.
Impeachment Hearings, Sporting Events or Entertainment Shows?
The poll asked the public if they had spent more time watching sports events, entertainment shows or the impeachment hearings in the last week. Twenty-one percent of Americans said they spent more time watching the hearings; 28 percent said they watched more sports events, while 40 percent said they watched more entertainment shows. Ten percent said “none,” while 2 percent said they did not know or had no opinion (Total result of rounding).
Questions with breakdown below.
ABOUT THE POLL
The Seton Hall Sports Poll has been conducted regularly since 2006.Recently chosen for inclusion in iPoll by Cornell’s Roper Center for Public Opinion Research,its findings have been published everywhere from USA Today, ESPN, The New York Times, Washington Post, AP, and Reuters to Fox News and most points in between.
This poll was conducted by telephone November 18-20 among adults in the United States. The Seton Hall Sports Poll is conducted by the Sharkey Institute within the Stillman School of Business. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard landline and cell phones. The error for subgroups may be higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.
1. Last week did you spend more time watching sports events, entertainment shows or the impeachment hearings?
1 – Sports events 28%
2 – Entertainment shows 40
3 – Impeachment hearings 21
4 – None 10
5 – Don’t know/No Opinion 2
2. What would you most like to see happen in 2020, your favorite team winning the Super Bowl or World Series or your favorite candidate winning the presidential election?
1 – Team winning 19
2 – Candidate winning 74
3 – Don’t know/No opinion 6
ABOUT SETON HALL UNIVERSITY
One of the country’s leading Catholic universities, Seton Hall has been showing the world what great minds can do since 1856. Home to nearly 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students and offering more than 90 rigorous academic programs, Seton Hall’s academic excellence has been singled out for distinction by The Princeton Review, U.S. News & World Report and Bloomberg Businessweek.
Seton Hall embraces students of all religions and prepares them to be exemplary servant leaders and global citizens. In recent years, the University has achieved extraordinary success. Since 2009, it has seen record-breaking undergraduate enrollment growth and an impressive 110-point increase in the average SAT scores of incoming freshmen. In the past decade, Seton Hall students and alumni have received more than 30 Fulbright Scholarships as well as other prestigious academic honors, including Boren Awards, Pickering Fellowships, Udall Scholarships and a Rhodes Scholarship. The University is also proud to be among the most diverse national Catholic universities in the country.
During the past five years, the University has invested more than $165 million in new campus buildings and renovations. And in 2015, Seton Hall launched a School of Medicine as well as a College of Communication and the Arts. The University’s beautiful main campus in suburban South Orange, N.J. is only 14 miles from New York City — offering students a wealth of employment, internship, cultural and entertainment opportunities. Seton Hall’s nationally recognized School of Law is located prominently in downtown Newark. The University’s Interprofessional Health Sciences (IHS) campus in Clifton and Nutley, N.J. opened in the summer of 2018. The IHS campus houses the University’s College of Nursing, School of Health and Medical Sciences and the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University.
For more information, visit www.shu.edu.