Survey: Voters Most Interested in Issues Concerning Security and Comfort, Least Interested in Moral Issues

April 5, 2011

A new national survey of registered voters conducted by the Barna Group reveals that the issues that will most affect the candidate people support for President in the 2012 election are most likely to be those affecting their personal security and comfort. The matters that are likely to have the least impact on their choice of candidate are moral issues.

The issues most likely to influence which candidate voters embrace in the 2012 presidential election are health care (which 64% said will have “a lot of influence” on the candidate they choose), tax policies (60%), terrorism (50%) and employment policies (50%).

A second level of influential issues included immigration policies (45%), education policy (44%), the wars in the Middle East (43%), and America’s dependence upon foreign oil (38%).

The issues noted as being least likely to influence how voters feel about potential candidates tended to be those with distinct moral underpinnings. Those matters include domestic poverty policies (37%), abortion (27%), environmental policy (26%), and gay marriage (24%).

Faith Impacts Views 
The survey data showed that there are also substantial differences in the importance attached to various issues based upon a person's faith commitments.

One of the critical voting segments in America is born again Christians, who have represented nearly half of the votes cast in the most recent presidential elections. The interests of born again voters are distinct from those of non-born again adults: there were statistically significant differences in interest levels between those two segments regarding eight of the 12 issues in the survey. In each case where there was a gap between those groups, born again adults were more likely to consider the issue in question to have “a lot of influence” on their candidate selection. The largest gaps related to domestic poverty policy (19 points), terrorism (16 points), abortion (15 points), and dependence on foreign oil (15 points). Unexpectedly, there was no difference in the importance attached to the gay marriage issue between these two groups. 
Read more: Barna Reports