(This image representing the two major parties is by DonkeyHotey.)The Gallup Poll has just released a new survey regarding what the public sees as the most important issues right now -- the issues that they said needed to be dealt with in the next year. The survey was done on June 9th and 10th of a random national sample of 1,012 adults, and has a margin of error of 4 points. The eight top issues named by the poll's respondents are in the charts below (in the order of their perceived importance).
The first question that popped into my mind was which party do these issues favor, and to try and show that I included the percentage of each party (and Independents) that thought each issue was important. You will note that two issues are considered equally important by the two parties -- the number one issue of providing health care for veterans, and reform of the immigration system (the number five issue).
Two of the other issues are favored by Republicans -- more investigations of Benghazi (number four) and scaling back some parts of Obamacare (number eight). Four of the other issues are favored by Democrats -- equal pay for women (number two), quality pre-school for all children (number three), raising the minimum wage (number six), and enforcing a reduction in power plant carbon emissions (number seven).
On the whole, Republicans favor four of the eight issues while Democrats favor six of the eight. Does that give the Democrats a slight edge on the issues? Maybe. The real surprise for me in this survey was that creating jobs and fixing the economy did not make this list of important issues -- because in the final analysis, I think that's what the 2014 election will really be about.
