"VALUES VOTERS"?: Eugene Volokh

According to the exit polls -- and take them with a grain of salt -- moral values was given as the most important issue by 22% of voters. But 20% and 19% said economy/jobs and terrorism, respectively; and though theoretically these numbers are likely outside the mathematical margin of error for the entire survey (there were 13,000+ respondents nationwide, which means the purely mathematical margin of error would be roughly 1%), given all the nonmathematical imprecision inherent in this sort of survey, I'd say that it's a tie.

What's more, even if the 22% constitutes a plurality, that doesn't tell us much about just how important the issue to a majority of voters. Among other things, look how sensitive the plurality question is to the way the options are given or classified: If you combine terrorism and Iraq under the rubric of "national security," and combine their 19% and 15%, moral values gets displaced as the plurality winner. Likewise if you combine health care (which presumably means making health care more affordable) and economy/jobs, which put together count for 28%, into a single economic well-being category.

Now I'm quite sure that moral values are very important to many voters -- to some, they are the most important issue, and to others they may be a close second. But their garnering a 22% plurality as the most important issue tells us relatively little about how they actually stack up to other matters, such as national security, economic well-being, and so on. It seems to me that people pay more attention to these "most important issue" surveys, where the "winner" has less than a quarter of the vote, than the surveys deserve.

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posted by Eve at 1:57 PM | link

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