- Polling has shown that voters may find behavior disqualifying yet still support candidates.
- It largely depends on the circumstances — including the type of problems, how close an election is and the candidate’s personal appeal.
- Extramarital affairs don’t seem to matter much to voters unless there are other scandalous allegations.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
An exit poll in the contentious 2025 Virginia attorney general’s race included a striking takeaway, with national implications: People who find candidates’ past behavior disqualifying may still vote for them.
Late in the campaign, it had been revealed that Democratic nominee Jay Jones sent text messages years earlier suggesting that a GOP lawmaker should be shot and that his children should die.
Jones still won the election by more than six points. The exit poll showed 41% of voters said the texts were “disqualifying” — but 9% of those people voted for him anyway.
Given that example and plenty of others, including President Donald Trump’s lengthy political career despite his own personal scandals, it can be tempting to assume that personal controversies — like the multitude about Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner — don’t really matter.
The New York Times on Thursday published a lengthy investigation about six women Platner dated, with three saying he had engaged in toxic behavior and one accusing him of physically threatening conduct (Platner has strongly disputed any claims of physical intimidation or altercations). That’s after previous stories about Platner’s Nazi symbol tattoo (that Platner claims he didn’t understand until recently), ugly internet posts and sexting with women who weren’t his wife.
Platner has continued to lead in the polls of the Maine Senate race, despite the tattoo and the internet posts (though those polls don’t reflect the latest revelations).
It might be tempting to reason that the country has just become so partisan that none of it matters. But that’s an over-simplification.
It’s fair to say ugly personal problems don’t matter the way they once did. But depending on the circumstances — including the type of problems, how close an election is and the candidate’s personal appeal — recent history shows they can still play a major role in elections.
Trump’s personal baggage has little comparison in modern American politics. After having his extramarital affairs plastered all over the tabloids for many years, there was the “Access Hollywood” tape’s release in 2016, him being found civilly liable for sexual abuse in 2023 and him being convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in 2024.
He still won the 2024 election, of course.
But it’s clear he did so at least in part because he’s spent years working to mitigate these problems. He not only built a cult of personality in the Republican Party, but he cast himself as an unvarnished advocate for people with better morals — the serial sinner who delivers the faithful. And he undercut the legal scrutiny he faced by relentlessly claiming it was the work of nefarious Democrats.
All of which has given Republicans and enough independents sufficient license to downgrade the importance of these personal problems — if not dismiss them.
And that’s clearly what has happened.
A Gallup poll late in 2024 showed registered voters said by double-digits that Kamala Harris had stronger moral character than Trump. But they also said by double-digits that Trump was a more “strong and decisive leader.”
We know which attribute carried the day.
Also telling is a 2018 CNN poll, which asked whether people believed that Trump had actually engaged in affairs. While 65% of Republican-leaning voters tended to believe that, just 22% said it was “definitely true.” That illustrates another massive factor: the suspension of disbelief.
But something else played a role there, too — extramarital affairs just don’t rank that high on Americans’ scandal-meter.
Even as far back as 2016, Pew Research Center polling showed just 37% of Americans said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who had an affair. It was less of a perceived problem than having personal financial issues or being an atheist.
A 2014 Quinnipiac University poll, meanwhile, showed people tended to be less concerned about affairs than they were about official misconduct. It became a little bit closer when the affairs also demonstrated hypocrisy (i.e. the candidate ran on moral values).
Recent history bears out that affairs don’t seem to be much of a factor.
There was a school of thought that Democrat Cal Cunningham lost North Carolina’s 2020 US Senate race after a late revelation of an affair. He had been leading in most polls, after all. But in context, his narrow loss was in line with what might have been expected in a state that Trump narrowly won in the same election.
Other recent politicians to lose amid such ugly allegations also generally had other problems.
Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker in 2022 had a myriad personal issues, but he was also a broadly uneven candidate who showed little command of the issues. (He also had hypocrisy issues, in that he pitched himself as anti-abortion rights but was accused of pressuring a woman to seek an abortion — which he denied.)
Republican Roy Moore shockingly lost a 2017 special election for US Senate in deep-red Alabama, after reports that he had pursued relationships with teenage girls decades earlier, while he was in his 30s. Moore denied the allegations.
And 2024 North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson lost that race by a wide margin after revelations by CNN’s KFile about a series of bizarre comments — like calling himself a “black NAZI!” — while posting on a pornographic internet message board.
Virginia Attorney General Jones’ problems also obviously mattered. While he won by more than six points, the other statewide Democratic candidates running on the same ballot won by 12 and 15 points. So Democrats won by enough that day to pull him across the line.
So voters do care about at least some personal scandals.
For Platner, his chances of winning likely boil down to whether people believe these failings are simply a relic of his past and if they will affect how he would represent Maine.
The idea that he might secretly harbor Nazi sympathies because of his tattoo doesn’t seem to have penetrated, at least so far. He’s also pitched himself as someone with real personal failings, but who has worked to grow from them. It’s almost part of his everyman image — somewhat similar to how Trump utilized his playboy image.
But the sexting accusations are more recent, so it’s possible that could give voters pause about Platner’s judgment — and cut against his argument that he’s reformed. While people might be willing to dismiss affairs, the Times reporting could make people believe he’s anti-woman. And given one of the women alleged that Platner knew his tattoo was a Nazi symbol, directly contradicting his public defense that he was unaware until recently, that could erode some voters’ trust.
It also matters how strongly voters feel about him. One thing Platner has going in his favor is that he seems to have a real magnetism as a candidate — not necessarily as much as Trump does with Republicans, but certainly in the same ballpark.
It’s easier for voters to forgive candidates they find likeable, after all. It’s easier to give plausible deniability to someone you really want to succeed.
So it’s hard to say which way this will lean on Platner. While he has proven resilient in polls, Democrats would be well-advised to view those polls skeptically.
After all, GOP Sen. Susan Collins’ Democratic opponent led in every poll in 2020, before Collins won by nine points.
And even the polling Platner leads suggests his support isn’t locked in. A University of Massachusetts Lowell poll last month showed that while 12% of Collins’s supporters said they could change their mind, 18% of Platner’s supporters said the same.
Platner has given them plenty of reason to waver.
The question likely comes down to what voters think is more important: potentially disqualifying behavior or having an additional check on Trump.
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