EXCLUSIVE: Vast Majority Of Americans Oppose Corporate Diversity Quotas, Poll Shows

The Daily Caller

EXCLUSIVE: Vast Majority Of Americans Oppose Corporate Diversity Quotas, Poll Shows

Laurel Duggan on March 16, 2023

The vast majority of Americans believe U.S. companies should hire executives based solely on merit, character and quality, according to a CRC Advisors poll shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Among respondents, 87% supported a merit-based approach, compared to 8% who supported a quota system for race and gender and 5% who were unsure or refused to answer, according to the poll. The pattern held true across political affiliations, with most Democrats, Republicans and independents favoring a merit-based hiring approach for executives.


At 93%, Republicans were only slightly more likely to oppose racial and gender quotas in corporate hiring compared to other groups: 90% of independents and 86% of Democrats supported a merit-only hiring approach, according to the poll.

“Instead of simply finding the best people to serve their customers, companies utilizing these quotas admit that they are prioritizing catering to extreme Leftists over the people who actually purchase and use their products,” Will Hild, Executive Director of Consumers’ Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “As we have seen with SVB, there are real-world consequences when businesses focus on identity politics over their core business.”

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed Friday in one of the largest bank failure in history, and some have linked the failure to the bank’s massive spending on left-leaning initiatives.

“Americans at every level are hurt by identity politics happening in the boardroom,” Hild said. “From the employees of the depositor companies at SVB who spent the weekend wondering if their company would be able to pay their next paycheck, to the U.S. taxpayer who is now on the hook to bail them out, consumers are not being put first. It is time to start serving your customers and not woke politicians.”

Respondents also opposed the use of quotas in deciding who runs companies; 72% opposed the quotas and said board members should be chosen based on merit, compared to 22% who believed U.S. companies should be required to have at least one black person and one woman on their board, according to the poll. Among Democrats, 55% opposed quotas for board members and 40% supported them, while 88% of Republicans opposed the quotas and 8% supported them.

The polling also found widespread opposition to corporations’ involvement in politics; 86% said businesses should stay away from politics and focus on delivering quality goods and services, 75% said businesses should stay out of the fight on “culture war” issues such as climate change, abortion and transgenderism, and 70% said state pension funds should prioritize investing based on customer returns rather than political issues, according to the poll.

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The poll surveyed 1,600 registered voters Feb. 16-20 with a 2.45% margin of error.

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