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Billy Vaughn, PhD CDP is director of the Diversity Training University International's Diversity Professional Certification program. He is a master consultant, trainer, and facilitator with several books and numerous published articles. His clients include the Central Intelligence Agency, Qualcomm, Inc., University of California, Santa Cruz, European Central Bank, and Costco.

Author's Name

Billy Vaughn

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415-692-0121

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www.dtui.com/conferences.html

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A recent poll indicates that the Republican party no longer has a candidate who can lead Americans toward embracing the cultural and racial differences in their increasingly diverse society. About one in three or 30% of the respondents in the Diversity Training University International (DTUI.com) poll selected Mitt Romney as the candidate that would most likely improve racial and ethnic relations. McCain and Giuliani did not receive a single vote.

Barack Obama received the most votes with 48%. Hillary Clinton received 21% of the votes, which roughly translates into about one in five respondents. John Edwards, another Super Tuesday casualty, did not receive a single vote.

What’s the story with Mitt Romney? It is no doubt that his pro gay civil union stance while he was the governor of Massachusetts has a lot to do with it. It also helps that the state passed the civil union law. While Mitt has tried to retract his pro-civil union stance during the short run for Republican party presidency nomination, he still has an equality record that the Democratic race front runners cannot easily match.

Americans are, in part, basking in the glory of having a woman and person of color as serious contenders for the presidency. They like witnessing the social progress that has been made. This is one more reason the Republicans are in trouble. The economy is certainly a huge concern, but don’t discount the power of a candidate’s social capital in this election.

Respondents had an opportunity to vote against all of the listed candidates or to indicate that the best candidate was not in the list. However, only 5% of the votes went to these choices combined. Visitors to the DTUI.com website had opportunities to respond to the poll from January 27, 2008 to February 15, 2008 resulting in sample of 139 respondents out of about 1500 visitors. DTUI.com site visitors and newsletter subscribers tend to be highly educated (78% college educated), represented slightly more by women, at least 45 years old, and financially well off (i.e., about one in three visitors earn more than $100K annually). The results have a seven-point error margin. Notice that Senator Obama remains the leader by 10 points over Romney even when the error margin is considered. Data were analyzed by the DTUI.com research division.