A new poll from Business Insider and SurveyMonkey found that Americans are surprisingly forgiving of politicians who have extramarital affairs -- so long as their lover isn't a prostitute.
The recent survey looked at how a congressional representative's scandalous behavior -- such as infidelity, drug use or a DUI infraction -- would affect a voter's decision to support the otherwise "effective" politician. They found that only 28 percent of the roughly 600 people polled would stop supporting a candidate because of his or her infidelity.
But people were far less forgiving when it came to politicians who were caught "using the services" of prostitutes. More than half of those surveyed said they would discontinue their support of a politician who was caught with a call girl.
And it looks like real-life voters are just as understanding as the hypothetical ones that participated in the poll. On Tuesday, disgraced former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford won back his seat in Congress nearly four years after coming clean about a secret affair with Argentine woman María Belén Chapur.
Click over to Business Insider for more interesting poll results. Then, click through the slideshow below for more on Sanford and 11 other politicians who confessed to having an extramarital affair.
