A Question of Values

A poorly devised exit poll question and a dose of spin are threatening to undermine our understanding of the 2004 presidential election.

The news media has made much of the finding that a fifth of voters picked "moral values" as the most important issue in deciding their vote - as many as cited terrorism or the economy. The conclusion: moral values are ascendant as a political issue.

The reporting accurately represents the exit poll data, but not reality. While morals and values are critical in informing political judgments, they represent personal characteristics far more than a discrete political issue. Conflating the two distorts the story of Tuesday's election.

This distortion comes from a question in the exit poll, co-sponsored by the national television networks and The Associated Press, that asked voters what was the most important issue in their decision: taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, economy/jobs, moral values or health care. Six of these are concrete, specific issues. The seventh, moral values, is not, and its presence on the list produced a misleading result.

How do we know? Pre-election polls consistently found that voters were most concerned about three issues: Iraq, the economy and terrorism. When telephone surveys asked an open-ended issues question (impossible on an exit poll), answers that could sensibly be categorized as moral values were in the low single digits. In the exit poll, they drew 22 percent.

Why the jump? One reason is that the phrase means different things to people. Moral values is a grab bag; it may appeal to people who oppose abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research but, because it's so broadly defined, it pulls in others as well. Fifteen percent of non-churchgoers picked it, as did 12 percent of liberals.

Look, too, at the other options on the list. Four of them played to John Kerry's strengths: economy/jobs, health care, education, Iraq. Just two worked in President Bush's favor: terrorism and taxes. If you were a Bush supporter, and terrorism and taxes didn't inspire you, moral values was your place to go on the exit poll questionnaire. People who picked it voted for him by 80 percent to 18 percent.

Moral values, moreover, is a loaded phrase, something polls should avoid. (Imagine if "patriotism" were on the list.) It resonates among conservatives and religious Americans. While 22 percent of all voters marked moral values as their top issue, 64 percent of religious conservatives checked it. And among people who said they were mainly interested in a candidate with strong religious faith (just 8 percent, in a far more balanced list of candidate attributes), 61 percent checked moral values as their top issue. So did 42 percent of people who go to church more than once a week, 41 percent of evangelical white Christians and 37 percent of conservatives.

The makeup and views of the electorate in other measures provide some context for the moral values result. The number of conservative white Protestants or weekly churchgoing white Protestants voting (12 percent and 13 percent of voters, respectively) did not rise in 2004. Fifty-five percent of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Sixty percent said they supported either gay marriage (25 percent) or civil unions (an additional 35 percent).

Opinion researchers don't always agree. The exit poll is written by a committee, and that committee voted down my argument against including "moral values" in the issues list. That happens - and the exit poll overall did deliver a wealth of invaluable data. The point is not to argue that moral values, however defined, are not important. They are, and they should be measured. The intersection of religiosity, ideology and politics is the staging ground for many of the most riveting social issues of our day.

The point, instead, is that this hot-button catch phrase had no place alongside defined political issues on the list of most important concerns in the 2004 vote. Its presence there created a deep distortion - one that threatens to misinform the political discourse for years to come.

A poorly devised exit poll question and a dose of spin are threatening to undermine our understanding of the 2004 presidential election...at last someone is catching on - these ratings on what people were voting on apparently came from the "juiced up" exit polls which were way off the mark as to who actually won the election - they did not represent the real makeup of the voting public, and they probably do not represent accurately the views of that public - a good thing for the 'rats - when "moral values" finally do become a dominant factor in why people vote, the party of Teddy Jo Kennedy, Bill Monica Clinton, and John Ho Chi Minh Kerry will really be finished......

A poorly devised exit poll question and a dose of spin are threatening to undermine our understanding of the 2004 presidential election.

I'm sorry, but that FIRST LINE got me! (yes, I'll go back and read the rest) HOLY SCHMOKES NY TIMES! You guys don't understand SPIT! "threatening to undermine our understanding"? I think you will not understand all the way to the unemployment line! You STILL don't get it! WE ARE TIRED OF YOUR SPIN AND YOUR LIES! Try some real journalism once in awhile. You might even get some enjoyment from living in the real world.

The fact that they don't get it and are incapable of getting is good. It is simply not possible to function in the long-term if you can not grasp the world as it is. Reality is in the Times's rear-view mirror, receding into the distance.

It has been so darn comical all week, after the election, won by our great president. The "Talking Heads", at all the major TV and News stations, have been so non-plussed and worried over the reason America went "red" on election day.

You and I, know why America went "red". And, we certainly, are not going to tell the MSM or the Democrats/Liberals about it.
Let them ponder and figure how they can become "one of the bible reading, rural etcetera ......"

While morals and values are critical in informing political judgments, they represent personal characteristics far more than a discrete political issue. Conflating the two distorts the story of Tuesday's election.

Sorry, but morals and values are the basis of this election. The lack of such in the '90's led to this day as surely as water flows down hill.

Statesmen...may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.
-- John Adams
Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.
John Jay, letter to Jedidiah Morse 28 Feb 1797

The left is promoting a contest on the issues of "values" and "morals" so as to avoid the word "reason".

They think that they can promote "reason" as conforming to their instructions if they can define "morals/values" as that which is the antithesis of reason.

I think for a long time Christians were the underdog and immorality was running rampant.
They were trying to take away our rights to pray to leave "under God" in the Pledge, trying to take away Christmas and all things Christian.
When we say God Bless America, we are NOT kidding.

Well thanks be to God, we are not in the minority or worse anymore. But lets not forget that we need to show what Christianity is all about and let not pride come before a fall. Compassionate conservative. Christian Conservative.

We cannot fall into the trap of being like them in being angry, nasty or name calling we have to be above it all we have nothing to be angry about anymore.

God is in control and all is right.

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