In the political year of the ‘cat lady’, retired Michigan teacher Carrol McElroy is one feline lover who is ready to pounce at the mere mention of Donald Trump.
‘I wouldn’t vote for him even for dog catcher. I just don’t like him as a person. I think he’s a liar and he’s a crook and I don’t trust him,’ she tells DailyMail.com while stocking up for her 18-pound tiger cat.
McElroy wears a pink T-shirt with a cat on it as she walks through the cat litter aisle at Magoo’s pet outlet in Flint, Michigan, and is mindful of the recent campaign animal controversies, including a debunked theory fanned by Trump about migrants eating people’s dogs and cats in neighboring Ohio. ‘What a crock of bull,’ she says.
To campaigns parsing demographic data seeking an edge in battleground states, her aversion to Trump should come as no surprise.
According to a new DailyMail.com poll, a near majority of female cat owners back Kamala Harris over Trump by 47 to 32 percent.
And single cat ladies – the group singled out by Trump running mate Sen. J.D. Vance – are one of her most enthusiastic groups. They support her by a stunning 59-21 percent, according to the poll, conducted by J.L. Partners.
Cat owner Carrol McElroy says she wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump for dog catcher. Polls show female cat owners skew toward Kamala Harris
‘Single women with cats look to be a deeply Democrat group: our data shows them backing Kamala Harris by a staggering 56 points. This is not some tiny minority, but a blue army: our data suggests that “single cat ladies” may make up as much as 18% of the electorate,’ said pollster Joe Alder.
‘That suggests there might be something deeper about choice of pet that also drives one’s choice of politicians,’ he added.
Scratch beneath the surface of the poll of 1,000 likely voters, and there is even more animal data about who is in the hunt.
Male dog owners back Trump by 54 to 38, while female dog owners support Harris 45 to 37.
Trump’s team is hammering Harris for past left-wing positions, but it his his own supporters who are ready for the Age of Aquarium.
Male fish owners support Trump over Harris by a stunning 82 to 12 percent in the poll. The results are narrower for female fish owners: Trump beats her by only 37 to 34 percent.
Trump runs up big margins among reptile owners and people who have fish as pets
Single, never married women with cats back Kamala Harris by an overwhelming margin
Birds of a feather: There are are distinctions by pet and by gender in the animal results
Fittingly for a candidate who repeatedly tells a parable about a snake at his rallies, reptile-owning men support Trump 67-22.
Harris has the edge in reptile-owning women, 39 to 34. Trump, the first president in years not to own a pet, also beats her among owners of small mammals.
In two pet stores in Genesee County, Michigan, a battleground state carried by Joe Biden in 2020, the data is all but confirmed.
Mitch Ryan, from Grand Blanc, has a Boston Terrier-French Poodle mix, a high-end animal favored by some celebs. He likes Trump’s candor.
‘Maybe he doesn’t think before he speaks. I can’t say he’s a liar, really. He’s not just blowing smoke up your keister.
‘I enjoy the honesty, and honestly I prefer somebody that’s honest than somebody that’s outright dishonest,’ he says.
Ryan wishes Trump and Vance didn’t talk either about people eating pets or ‘childless cat ladies,’ which has become a breakout line of the campaign.
‘I do wish she wouldn’t have said anything about it,’ he said, calling it ‘low hanging fruit’ that could be used against them. Not that he is willing to entirely write off the rumor. (Another DailyMail.com poll by J.L. Partners revealed a third of voters believe the rumor about Haitians eating cats and dogs).
‘I know for a fact that there’s been a lot of reports from people saying that this is happening. Is there proof? Currently, not so much.’
Mitch Ryan, from Grand Blanc, Michigan, has a Boston Terrier-French Poodle mix, likes Trump’s candor, but says he sometimes ‘doesn’t think before he speaks’
Michigan cat owner Joanne Stevenson bucked the demographic trend and fervently backs Trump. ‘I feel that he’s still my president,’ she said while shopping for her calico
John Tomlin spends several thousand dollars each year stocking his 90-gallon tank. He’s all in for shark skeptic Donald Trump
Dog owner Donny Russo plans to cast his first vote for Trump in November. But he was only tempted by dog chews made to look like Trump or President Joe Biden
Fish owner John Tomlin spends several thousand dollars each year stocking his 90-gallon tank, which makes him attuned to the business of government.
He says Trump has some shortcomings, but he supports him anyway.
‘Trump’s a businessman. He’s an idiot speaking, but he’s a businessman.’
His remark brought support from a Harris supporter who overheard him.
‘Thank you for saying that at least,’ she said.
‘He can’t speak for nothing. He’s the worst person to speak. But as of running the country, he knows what he’s doing when he’s running the business,’ Tomlin continued. ‘You can see that. Does he find loopholes and stuff? Sure he does.’
Not every cat owner is in Harris’s corner. One backing Trump is Joanne Stevenson, who came to buy a new collar for her diluted Calico cat – a breed that has no black coloring.
‘He did a lot for our country, and I don’t believe he ever lost. I feel that he’s still my president. I don’t think Biden is,’ she said, echoing Trump’s false claims, which he repeated in Michigan this week, that he didn’t lose the state in 2020.
‘He’s a pain in the butt,’ she said of Biden. ‘Look how we’re living everything: you go in the grocery store, everything was always higher and higher and higher.’
If Vance’s comments about ‘cat ladies’ bothered her, Stevenson isn’t saying. ‘I like him. So I I’m not going to say nothing bad about him,’ she said.
Donny Russo is 22, and will be eligible to vote for the first time in November.
His dogs, a Doberman Pinscher named Asia and a German Shepherd/Lab mix called Zoe, have a tough reputation, but his main concern is keeping the U.S. at peace.
‘Whoever’s going to not try to get us in another war or get us killed is who I support, he said. For Russo, that person is Trump, who repeatedly talks about being able to keep the country out of World War III.
He said too many politicians are ‘scared to tell the truth because of what the consequences would be. And it seems like Trump is not scared of that. You know, if he tells the truth, he could possibly get killed for it,’ he said, invoking the latest assassination attempt.
There is a metric in the store that isn’t as scientific as the DailyMail poll, but could still give a clue about pet owners’ political leanings in a critical battleground state.
A box features squeaky dog chews in the shape of Trump and Biden that are for sale. Store clerks say the idea is for customers to purchase the candidate you despise so the animal can chew it up.
There hasn’t been time to stock any Kamala Harris chews. But as of Wednesday, there were 12 of Trump, and 13 of Biden. That gave the Democrat the edge, in this pet store at least.
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