Major League Athletes Give Picks in Sports Illustrated Poll

The votes have been cast! Pencil in John McCain as the tax cutter, Hillary Clinton as the Clinton, and Barack Obama as the personality of the next generation – according to the 347 athletes who were anonymously polled for the March 24 issue of Sports Illustrated.

The "Athletic Supporters" feature, presented in the magazine's SI Players section, reveals the choices of athletes from MLB, the NBA, and the NHL who are eligible to vote in the 2008 election. Apart from the fact that a relatively high 77 athletes (22.2 percent) of those surveyed were either "Undecided" or supported candidates other than the three front-runners, there were some interesting things to be learned (and not to be learned) from the poll:

Baseball and hockey players love John McCain. The senior senator from Arizona won the MLB and NHL polls with 48.8 percent and 51.1 percent of the vote, respectively, far ahead of either Democrat.

"He spent time in a prison camp, and he's risen to U.S. senator. That's the American Dream, right?" said one MLB supporter of McCain.

"We have a war on, and he was a war guy," added another.

For Hillary Clinton, male athletes present as tough a crowd as one might expect, if not more so. The former First Lady garnered only 6.34 percent of the total vote, and, according to SI, appealed largely to those who remember her (and her husband's) earlier years in the White House fondly.

"Bill Clinton was the best president we ever had, and I'm sure he'll still be calling most of the shots if Hillary is elected," said one NBA player.

Most athletes that had something to say about Senator Clinton, positive or negative, rested on the position that a Hillary presidency would be a Bill presidency. "The Clintons had their time," said one basketball pro, while an NHL Clinton supporter explained, "I want Billary in there."

Barack Obama can't avoid the demographics of ethnicity in the major leagues. Illinois' junior senator found his greatest support among the NBA, where he took 62 of the 95 votes cast (65.3 percent), or 83.8 percent of the 74 votes actually cast for one of the three major candidates. These numbers compare sharply to his popularity in MLB and the NHL – two leagues from which he would be able to receive less African-American support – where Sen. McCain defeated him by a 2-1 and nearly 4-1 margin, respectively.

Major-league pros make some of the same mistakes as the rest of us... The article provided one heading under "Potential Hangups" for Senator Obama: Misinformed voters. According to the piece, one McCain supporter was convinced that Obama was Muslim, and then, upon being corrected, claimed that the senator had converted to Christianity at some point.

…while reminding us that they will likely not see every issue the way most of their fans do. If athletes vote in November with their wallets, the Republican nominee will be picking up a lot of major-league votes.Said a baseball supporter of the Arizona senator, "Looks like I'm voting for McCain. Why? I like my money, and I don't like socialism."

It's the tax bracket they're in, explained other athletes. It's safe to say that the average MLB, NBA, or NHL fan might be looking at tax breaks for the wealthy in a completely different manner.

It's worth noting, however, that many other issues and concerns came to the fore of discussion, according to poll results.

"I think Obama is the JFK for this generation," claimed one MLB pro.

"McCain would just replace Bush, and I don't want that," lamented an undecided hockey player to the magazine.

"We need a national health care program, and [Clinton] can get it done," a baseball player suggested.

In the end, though McCain won the most votes, with 132 out of the 347 cast (38.0 percent), when combined the Dueling Democrats held a margin of 1.8 percent (six votes). If the athletes' voices are anything to go by, the 2008 campaign will not be cooling down any time soon, and, as all other indicators seem to suggest, the presidential candidates will be in a race to the wire.