What’s most important to us in the midterms
Bottom Line: We’re now just five weeks out from the midterm elections and the stakes are extremely high. Who’ll control Congress? In Florida, who will be our next Governor and Attorney General (among many key races in our state)? In a separate story today, I’ve broken out the record midterm voter enthusiasm for this cycle according to the Pew Research Center. In this story I’ll discuss what’s most important to us as we’re generally excited to be casting our votes. Most important of all...who controls Congress at 72%. That means that most people intend to cast votes for Congressional candidates with their party, rather than the specific candidate, in mind. As for the issues themselves. These are the top issues right now that we’d be voting for...
- 76% Supreme Court
- 75% Health care
- 74% Economy
- 69% Gun policy
- 67% Medicare
All told there are 14 issues that are important to more than half of all voters. That’s the most I’ve ever seen. Other important issues are...Social Security, Taxes, Immigration, Race issues, Environment, Terrorism, Budget deficit, Trade, Abortion & Drugs (in that order). It’s not surprising that the Supreme Court is currently at the top of the list given the emotions associated with the way Kavanaugh’s nomination has played out. In fact, the last time we had a vacancy on the court (that was eventually filled by Neil Gorsuch), 64% of Americans said it was a significant issue to them (3rd most important issue to us at the time) - so we can clearly see that this nomination does matter more to us. The thing is there’s a real chance this process is completed prior to the midterms. Should that be the case and the top issue is taken off of the table, what would the impact be? Are the politics of health care being a top issue as opposed to the Supreme Court any different in the minds of undecided voters? With under five weeks to go we’re not going to have to wait a whole lot longer to find out.