Justin Bieber polls unfavorably across party lines — ouch! - Los Angeles Times
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Justin Bieber polls unfavorably across party lines — ouch!

Justin Bieber performs in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, last week. A recent poll shows less love for the Biebs than his fans might think.
(Ali Haider / EPA)
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Dear Justin Bieber: America’s grown-ups aren’t exactly in love with you. In fact, according to a recent poll, Bieber was the only pop artist to earn an unfavorable rating from people across the political landscape.

A majority of Democrats (23% favorable-54% unfavorable), Republicans (17%-52%), and independents (18%-56%) all bagged on the Biebs.

And why not, given the 19-year-old pop star’s recent neighborhood conflict, maybe pot smoking and all of his foibles while on tour in Europe, including but not limited to ditching a gift monkey in Germany? Grown-ups in general don’t love that stuff, especially the alleged spitting-on-the-neighbor part.

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He did even worse with certain groups when results were sliced by age, with adults ages 30-45 and 46-65 giving him 62% and 60% unfavorable rankings, respectively, with those older and younger thinking better of him.

Now, this isn’t some Website-X-wants-publicity-so-does-an-online-poll poll. This was conducted by Public Policy Polling, which is known for political polling and purportedly does things all scientific-like. We’re sure they’re not minding the publicity, but at least they do the math. The telephone survey of 571 voters nationwide was done May 6-7, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Other artists named in the survey were Morrissey, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Adele, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake.

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They asked about Skrillex too, but most folks seemed to wonder what a Skrillex was. A majority of people, 75% of whom said they had not “been to the club,” thought Snoop Lion should ditch that name and go back to Snoop Dogg -- but not Snoop Doggy Dogg. And a majority of people really didn’t like rap music.

The on-again, off-again relationship of Riri and Breezy drew interesting results depending on how the data were sliced. A resounding 67% of all polled thought Rihanna should not get back with Brown, though when that was broken down by race, African Americans were easier on the couple with 38% saying go for it and 16% saying they weren’t sure. Regionally, 84% of those in the Midwest said no way they should be together.

And then there’s the job of president.

The only pop stars the whole group would like to see less than Bieber behind the Oval Office desk were Chris Brown and Rihanna. Interestingly, with those minority stands broken down by political affiliation, more Republicans were behind teams Bieber and Brown, while Democrats came up higher for Beyonce and Lady Gaga to lead the free world, and threw Rihanna under the bus. Independents were higher than average on Bieber, but way lower on Brown.

When it comes to the guy with the most votes, however, Timberlake takes that honor, with 34% of all respondents picking him out of the bunch to be president. However, folks also mostly think he should stick to making music or playing golf.

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One flaw in the polling, however: They didn’t include anyone under 18. Perhaps Bieber’s not doing as bad as it looks?
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