2026-06-05T21:08:09.054Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
- 民调显示，选民可能会认为某一行为 disqualifying（丧失参选资格），但仍会支持相关候选人。
- 这在很大程度上取决于具体情况——包括问题的性质、选举的激烈程度以及候选人的个人魅力。
- 婚外情对选民而言似乎影响不大，除非同时存在其他丑闻指控。
本文由AI生成摘要，并经CNN编辑审核。
在竞争激烈的2025年弗吉尼亚州总检察长选举中，一项出口民调得出了一个具有全国性影响的惊人结论：认为候选人过往行为丧失参选资格的选民，仍可能会投票给他们。
竞选后期曝出，民主党候选人杰伊·琼斯多年前曾发送短信，暗示应枪杀一名共和党州议员，并称其子女应当去死。
琼斯最终仍以超过6个百分点的优势赢得选举。出口民调显示，41%的选民认为这些短信“丧失参选资格”——但其中9%的人还是投票支持了他。
结合这一案例以及其他诸多事例，包括唐纳德·特朗普总统尽管深陷个人丑闻仍拥有漫长的政治生涯，人们很容易得出结论：个人争议——比如缅因州民主党参议院候选人格雷厄姆·普拉特纳面临的诸多指控——其实无关紧要。
《纽约时报》周四刊发了一篇长篇调查报道，揭露普拉特纳曾与六名女性约会，其中三人称他存在虐待行为，一人指控他实施了人身威胁（普拉特纳强烈否认任何人身恐吓或打斗指控）。在此之前，已有媒体报道过普拉特纳的纳粹符号纹身（普拉纳特称自己直到最近才知晓该纹身的含义）、低俗网络言论以及与非妻子女性的色情短信往来。
尽管有纹身和网络言论的负面新闻，普拉特纳仍在缅因州参议院竞选的民调中保持领先（不过这些民调并未反映最新爆料）。
人们可能会推断，美国已变得如此党派极化，以至于任何个人丑闻都不再重要。但这一结论过于简单化了。
可以肯定的是，个人品行污点已不像过去那样举足轻重。但近期历史表明，根据具体情况——包括问题的性质、选举的激烈程度以及候选人的个人魅力——这些污点仍可能在选举中发挥重要作用。
特朗普的个人包袱在现代美国政治中几乎无可比拟。多年来，他的婚外情一直占据各大小报头条，2016年“走进好莱坞”录音带曝光，2023年被民事认定存在性虐待行为，2024年又因篡改商业记录罪名成立34项重罪。
当然，他还是赢得了2024年大选。
但很明显，他能获胜至少部分得益于多年来一直在设法淡化这些问题。他不仅在共和党内部打造了个人崇拜，还将自己塑直言不讳的道德捍卫者——一个屡犯过错却能兑现承诺的人。同时，他不断声称针对自己的法律审查是民主党险恶势力所为，以此削弱相关审查的公信力。
这一切都让共和党人和足够多的无党派人士有充分理由降低这些个人问题的重要性——即便不是完全无视。
事实显然也是如此。
2024年末的一项盖洛普民调显示，登记选民以两位数的优势认为卡玛拉·哈里斯的道德品格优于特朗普。但同时，他们也以两位数的优势认为特朗普是“更加强势、果断的领导人”。
我们都知道，哪一项特质占据了上风。
2018年CNN的一项民调同样能说明问题，该民调询问受访者是否认为特朗普确实有过婚外情。65%倾向共和党的选民表示相信，但仅有22%的人认为此事“千真万确”。这凸显了另一个关键因素：人们会选择暂缓质疑。
但还有另一个因素也发挥了作用——婚外情在美国人的丑闻评判标准中，排名其实并不高。
早在2016年，皮尤研究中心的民调就显示，仅有37%的美国人表示会不太愿意投票给有婚外情的候选人。这一比例低于人们对个人财务问题或无神论者候选人的反感程度。
与此同时，2014年昆尼皮亚克大学的民调显示，人们对婚外情的担忧程度低于对官员渎职行为的担忧。而当婚外情同时体现出虚伪时（比如候选人以道德价值观为竞选纲领），两者的差距就会缩小。
近期历史也证明，婚外情似乎并不会成为太大的影响因素。
曾有一种观点认为，民主党人卡尔·坎宁安在2020年北卡罗来纳州联邦参议院选举中失利，是因为选举后期曝出的婚外情丑闻。毕竟，他此前在多数民调中都处于领先地位。但综合来看，他以微弱劣势落败，与特朗普在该州以微弱优势获胜的同一选举周期内的预期结果相符。
其他近期因类似负面指控失利的政客，通常也存在其他问题。
2022年佐治亚州联邦参议院共和党候选人赫歇尔·沃克存在诸多个人问题，但他本身也是一名表现平平的候选人，对议题缺乏深入掌控。（他还存在虚伪问题，自称反对堕胎权，却被指控施压一名女性堕胎——他对此予以否认。）
2017年，共和党人罗伊·摩尔在共和党票仓阿拉巴马州的联邦参议院特别选举中意外落败，此前有报道称他在30多岁时曾与未成年少女发展关系。摩尔否认了相关指控。
2024年北卡罗来纳州州长候选人马克·罗宾逊则因广泛失利，此前CNN的KFile栏目揭露了他在色情网络论坛上发布的一系列怪异言论——比如自称“黑人纳粹”。
弗吉尼亚州总检察长琼斯的问题显然还是产生了影响。尽管他以6个百分点的优势获胜，但同票上的其他民主党全州候选人分别以12和15个百分点的优势胜出。因此，民主党人当天的整体胜势足以让他涉险过关。
可见，选民确实会在意某些个人丑闻。
普拉特纳的现状
对普拉特纳而言，他的获胜概率可能最终取决于选民是否认为这些过错只是他过去的陈年旧事，以及这些过错是否会影响他代表缅因州的方式。
至少到目前为止，认为他可能暗中同情纳粹的观点似乎并未深入人心。他还将自己塑造成一个确实存在个人缺点，但一直在努力改过自新的人。这几乎成了他“普通人”形象的一部分——有点类似特朗普利用自己的花花公子形象的方式。
但色情短信指控是近期才曝出的，这可能会让选民对普拉特纳的判断力产生疑虑——并削弱他“改过自新”的说法。尽管人们可能愿意原谅婚外情，但《纽约时报》的报道可能会让民众认为他歧视女性。而且，其中一名女性指控普拉特纳明知纹身是纳粹符号，这直接与他此前“直到最近才知晓”的公开辩解相矛盾，这可能会削弱部分选民对他的信任。
选民对他的好感程度也至关重要。普拉特纳的一个优势在于，他作为候选人似乎拥有真正的吸引力——虽然未必能与特朗普在共和党中的号召力相提并论，但也相差无几。
毕竟，选民更容易原谅他们喜欢的候选人。对于真正希望其成功的人，人们更容易为其找借口。
因此，很难断言普拉特纳的最终结果会如何。尽管他在民调中表现出韧性，但民主党人最好还是对这些民调持怀疑态度。
毕竟，2020年共和党参议员苏珊·柯林斯的民主党对手在所有民调中都领先，最终柯林斯却以9个百分点的优势获胜。
即便普拉特纳领先的民调也显示，他的支持率并不稳固。马萨诸塞大学洛厄尔分校上个月的一项民调显示，尽管12%的柯林斯支持者表示可能改变主意，但18%的普拉特纳支持者也持同样态度。
普拉特纳给了他们足够多动摇的理由。
问题最终可能归结为：选民认为什么更重要——可能丧失参选资格的行为，还是为特朗普增设一道制衡？
When do candidate scandals actually matter?
2026-06-05T21:08:09.054Z / CNN
- 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.
Where Platner stands
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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