December 6, 2002
THE INTANGIBLES:
Republicans overwhelming choice over Democrats on family values, integrity; Dems lead on tolerance, Zogby Post-Election Survey Reveals (Zogby News, December 05, 2002)A new poll conducted in 18 states and the District of Columbia reveals that in 17 of the states, Republicans are deemed by voters as better suited than Democrats on family values and integrity.The Zogby Post-Election Poll, conducted by telephone November 7-10, continues to look at how specific demographic groups voted in the Midterm elections, and why.
The poll sampled 600 actual voters in 18 states and the District of Columbia. States polled were Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, Colorado, Michigan, North Carolina, Missouri, and Minnesota, Iowa, New Hampshire, Arkansas, California, and South Dakota.
Of those states, Democrats were judged clearly best suited to promote family values only in the heavily Democratic District of Columbia (Democrats 57%, Republicans 13%). Voters in Massachusetts were split (Democrats 36%, Republicans 35%). In every other state, Republicans were the clear choice to handle family values including California (Republicans 42%, Democrats 31%), Minnesota (Republicans 41%, Democrats 32%), and Texas (Republicans 56%, Democrats 25%).
One of the odd dissonances to emerge from the recent election is that we all understand the war on terror to have benefited Republicans, but many polls fail to show national security and the coming war with Iraq to have been major factors in how folks voted. One wonders if it's possible that there's an amorphous, maybe even immeasurable, sense in which these values issues have risen in prominence in voters' minds as a result of 9-11. We all speculated about how the aftermath of 9-11 would make us re-examine our culture and our lives and decide what 's really important. If any significant number--and in a 50-50 nation just 5% would be significant--of people have undergone such a process and determined that life and family and community and culture matter more than they'd realized, this could, practically by itself, explain the tilt to the Right.
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 6, 2002 8:17 AM
What you say is true, but there is another factor. 9/11 brought into sharp relief the fact that the biggest issues a politician faces tend not to be the big issues in the campaign. So if you think that W has done well after 9/11 and, certainly with hindsight, that Clinton's response to Al Qaida
was feckless, then integrity and shared values become that much more important in deciding who to vote for. As you point out, in a 50/50 nation, it doesn't take much to tilt the balance rightward.