MoralValues

Exit Polls Legacy blog posts Measurement Issues The 2004 Race

Saturday’s New York Times had three articles on the other big exit poll issue this week: The question that showed 22% of voters choosing "moral values" as the issue they were most concerned about.

In an op-ed piece, ABC News Polling Director Gary Langer presented a methodological critique:

The exit poll…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.

On the same page, David Brooks’ column noted Andrew Kohut’s analysis of the exit polls:

As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily.

In the news section, Jim Rutenberg covered the controversy, including a rejoinder from Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who called the critiques "garbage:"

"The people who picked moral values as an issue know what that means," he said. "It’s a code word in surveys for a cluster of issues like gay marriage and abortion."

Mr. McInturff said that if "moral values" was really a "catchall" with a confused meaning, then more Democrats would have picked it. Of the 22 percent who chose "moral values," 80 percent were Bush supporters, 20 percent were Kerry supporters. "It’s self-selected by people for whom these issues are very important for their votes," he said, adding that the margin by which Mr. Bush carried these voters arguably made the difference in the election.

Who is right? I agree with Langer and Kohut that the use of a closed-ended question on the exit poll exaggerated the percentage of voters who would have volunteered "moral values" as a response. Had the exit polls been able to ask an open-ended question, the results would have been comparable to those obtained from telephone surveys during the campaign.

However, Democrats are right to conclude they "need to do a better job connecting with cultural traditionalists," as Rutenberg’s piece put it. Consider that in a survey conducted in mid October by the Pew Research Center, 63% of registered voters considered "moral values" very important in deciding their vote. That percentage was less than for issues like the economy, jobs, terrorism, Iraq, education and health care (which ranged from 73% to 78% very important), but about the same as Social Security (65%) and more than issues like taxes (59%), the budget deficit (57%) and the environment (53%). And in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in mid-October, registered voters thought George Bush would do a better job on "issues related to moral values" than John Kerry by an 18 point margin (47% to 29%).

Mark Blumenthal

Mark Blumenthal is political pollster with deep and varied experience across survey research, campaigns, and media. The original "Mystery Pollster" and co-creator of Pollster.com, he explains complex concepts to a multitude of audiences and how data informs politics and decision-making. A researcher and consultant who crafts effective questions and identifies innovative solutions to deliver results. An award winning political journalist who brings insights and crafts compelling narratives from chaotic data.