33% of Presidential Candidates Show Courage
But We've Got the Goods on the Cowards Too
VoteEasy at VoteSmart.org
VoteSmart.org announced today that only 33% of the candidates for president passed the Political Courage Test. But even if they flunked, Vote Smart did the work to get the goods on them, too.
The test, which has been conducted in every election since 1992, examines each candidate’s willingness to give their intentions on the issues voters are most concerned about. The number of candidates passing the test has generally declined over the years as exploding levels of financial resources have enabled them to control their own messages and ignore all the other pressing issues on the voters’ minds.
Each candidate was contacted a minimum of six times and asked to provide this crucial information to citizens. Of the 206 Presidential candidates tested, 68 were willing to make a good faith effort to help voters by answering questions on a wide range of topics.
List of major passing candidates:
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Gov. Steve Bullock, former Rep. John Delaney, former Rep. Joe Sestak.
List of major failing candidates:
Pres. Donald Trump, former VP Joe Biden, Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Sec. Julian Castro, Andrew Yang.
Compare major candidates’ issue positions with those of your own on Vote Smart’s powerful new tool VoteEasy at VoteSmart.org. For candidates who refused to provide specific issue positions, Vote Smart used teams of researchers to cull through years of public records to compile answers on each failed candidate’s behalf. Those answers were supplied to each candidate for verification – not one objected to Vote Smart’s findings.
All of this data is now available on our new website at VoteSmart.org.