One more data point in terms of political parties' views on science: there are two people in the White House now who believe that evolution is a hoax, Mike Pence and Mark Meadows, both of whom derive that belief from their religious practices.
Does a leader need to believe that evolution is a process that happens to be an effective leader? Not necessarily, though it may hinder their ability to make informed choices when, e.g. dealing with a pandemic whose causal agent is evolving.
(Does a leader need to accept a heliocentric model? Again, probably not, very little in the way of political life depends on the leader's cosmology at that scale, but for some reason it would make me deeply uncomfortable if we ended up with a president some day who insisted the sun revolved around the earth.)
There's also a large percentage of the population whose religious beliefs preclude a belief in evolution, especially in certain regions of the country. In a democracy, you don't get to suppress certain viewpoints or beliefs because science disagrees with them. You get a representative of the people.
Does a leader need to believe that evolution is a process that happens to be an effective leader? Not necessarily, though it may hinder their ability to make informed choices when, e.g. dealing with a pandemic whose causal agent is evolving.
(Does a leader need to accept a heliocentric model? Again, probably not, very little in the way of political life depends on the leader's cosmology at that scale, but for some reason it would make me deeply uncomfortable if we ended up with a president some day who insisted the sun revolved around the earth.)