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. (My post about the possible importance of the same-sex marriage question in Ohio reflects that.) 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.
Finally, note that a Cox News Service service story, reprinted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and perhaps elsewhere, reported that “Of 12,649 voters who participated in exit polls nationwide, 76 percent of Bush voters said ‘moral values’ was the one issue that mattered most in their selection”; but I couldn’t find any such report, and it’s directly contrary to the CNN account of the exit polls. I think this might have been an error; please correct me if I’m wrong.
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