Polls On Profanity In Politics

After President Trump’s State of the Union speech, Politico ran a story about profanity-laced reactions to the speech from some Democrats. According to the piece, firebrand Texan Jasmine Crockett let it rip with the f-word, but so, too, did a handful of her Democratic colleagues. Last week The Hill followed up with a story about Democratic hopefuls embracing the F-bomb on the campaign trail. The strategy is to show Democrats’ deep anger and to give them an aura of authenticity to help them reconnect with working class voters. Will it work? What do the polls tell us?

Cursing is hardly new in politics. Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are no stranger to what we used to call bad language. When Joe Biden whispered to President Obama that the Obamacare signing was a “big f—ing deal,” most people shrugged.

In 1980, Gallup asked whether Americans would object strongly to some presidential behaviors, including using tranquilizers occasionally (36% did), seeing a psychiatrist (30%), wearing jeans occasionally in the Oval Office (21%) and having a cocktail before dinner each night (14%). A third said they would object strongly if a president used profane language in private (italics mine). LBJ’s and Richard Nixon’s fondness for expletives was not widely known until tapes from their tenures came out, and the press generally didn’t write about private behavior.

Pollsters have paid little sustained attention to people’s attitudes about profanity so no trend data exist. But there are patterns. In 1993, Princeton Survey Research Associates asked whether certain rules of behavior guided them and their families, 64% said the rule “not to curse or use profanity” applied to their family, while nearly three in ten said it did not. When asked about other people, only 15% said nearly everyone or most people followed this rule, while 28% said about half did, 46% some, and 8% none. We generally think our own behaviors are more admirable than those of others.

When asked by Public Agenda about their own behavior in 2002, 12% said they often cursed, 25% did so occasionally, 43% rarely, and 19% never. And in an AP/NORC poll from 2016, 47% said they never used the F-word or used it few times a year. Twenty-three percent said they used it several times a day or once a day.

Polls taken over the years reveal another pattern: social norms may change, but a substantial number of Americans don’t like to hear profanity. In a 1995 ABC News question, 72% said it would bother them to hear an adult regularly curse or use swear words in conversation, while a quarter said it would not. In 2010, 35% told CBS News pollsters that they were bothered a lot of when people use swear words or curse in conversation, 24% bothered some, 15% a little, and 23% were not bothered at all.

In a 2022 HarrisX/Deseret News poll, there were huge age gaps, with 26% of 18-34 year olds compared to 68% of those 65 and older saying cursing bothered them a lot or some. In a 2024 Pew poll, 38% said cursing out loud in public was never acceptable, 27% rarely, 23% sometimes, and 9% usually or always so. Once again, young people were less concerned than older ones. An NBC News/Wall Street poll from 2017 revealed that 65% said greater acceptance of bad language and poor behavior in public life bothered them a great deal.

In a mid-April Pew poll, 84% of Democrats said it was extremely (59%) or very (25%) important for Democratic elected officials to push hard against Trump’s policies when they disagree with them. In another question, however, just 26% said they were doing an excellent or good job at this, while 46% described their efforts as fair and 27% as poor. So while there is appetite for pushback, the deliberate use of profanity won’t be welcome. If cursing is calculated, can it really be convincing? We shall see.