Sherry Epperly says honesty is the most important trait for a presidential candidate, ahead of compassion, leadership skills and philosophy of government. She's hardly alone among voters this election year. In an Associated Press poll, one-third of Americans said honesty was the most important quality they were looking for. Other findings in the poll, conducted by ICR of Media Pa., suggest indifference toward party labels this year. Almost half of those polled said it wouldn't matter whether a Democrat or Republican won the presidential election in 2000.
Democrats look after the ones who are really low-income.
Lambert said he would be fairly likely to consider voting for a third-party candidate, but he also said he hadn't started paying close attention to the campaign. Indeed, pollsters say the percentage of people who answered that they would consider voting for a third-party candidate is not a reliable measure of eventual support. None of the current Reform Party candidates has shown strength against the Democratic and Republican front-runners. The telephone poll of 1,023 people was taken Nov. 19-23. It has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.