A new poll found that marijuana users are bigger fans of Democratic cannabis policy than that of Republicans. This may not be a surprise to many, but it could spell doom for the GOP in an election year when voters are increasingly concerned with the gap between state and federal laws.
Pollsters at NuggMD.com, a company that helps patients get medical cannabis cards, asked 635 likely voters who use marijuana about U.S. cannabis policy in light of the upcoming elections.
While the respondents were presumably from various political backgrounds, the majority (56 percent) said Democrats had “better ideas for cannabis policy” than Republicans (16 percent). Strikingly, nearly a third of respondents (28 percent) said both parties’ ideas were “the same.”
Marijuana policy likely won’t make or break a candidate, but it will absolutely play some part in this year’s election. When asked if respondents would support a generic Republican or Democrat candidate for president, 33 percent said it depends, and that they can go either way, while 38 percent said they’d vote for the Democratic candidate and 21 percent said they’d vote Republican.
The fairly large number of fence-sitters could easily make the difference come ballot counting time — especially since a large majority of the respondents (59 percent) said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate if they were to endorse pro-weed policies.
When asked specifically to choose between Trump and President Joe Biden, 36 percent of respondents said they’d vote for Trump and 43 percent said Biden. That’s close enough to mean that Trump could close the gap with weed consumers if he were to go public with a pro-cannabis policy stance.
The poll also found that cannabis users think the parties and the candidates are mostly out of touch on weed.
When asked if the candidates’ ages played a factor in their understanding of marijuana markets and culture (Biden is 81 and Trump is 77), 69 percent of respondents said that younger candidates would have a better understanding.
When it comes to the level of understanding of market and culture shown by elected officials, 37 percent of respondents said officials understand neither and 36 percent said they understand the market but not the culture. Only 20 percent said they think officials understand both. This is significant, because a whopping 88 percent said officials need to understand both the market and the culture to effectively create policy.
Overall, respondents seemed to believe that Democrats had better weed policies than Republicans, but they didn’t seem to have a very high opinion of either party’s approach. This wouldn’t have been a problem in previous elections, since the one-issue pro-cannabis voters were few and far between. But even the average voter is starting to question the status quo these days and either party taking a hard turn toward favoring pro-weed policies could help nudge those voters in a direction.