Survey: Format Influenced Voter Priorities ("moral values" in polls)

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON -- This presidential election has been described by many as one in which morality mattered most to voters. But that perception may be driven at least partially by how pollsters asked voters about their priority issues.

Whether voters named "moral values" their key issue partly depended on whether that subject was included in a list of choices provided by pollsters, according to a Pew Research Center analysis released Thursday.

When "moral values" was included in poll questions, it was named more often than any other issue. But when voters were just asked to name the issue most important in their vote for president -- without being given a list of answers -- moral values trailed the war in Iraq and the economy, according to the Pew survey.

"The advantage of the open-ended question is it tells you what's at the top of mind for voters -- what they're thinking," said Cliff Zukin, a veteran pollster and professor of public policy at Rutgers University. "Much too much has been made of the moral values answer."

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-voters-moral-values,0,5505530.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[laheina]

1. but of course...

it's like one of those "when are you going to stop beating your wife" questions. Just to include it leads people to choose it, because if they don't, it is like admitting that they are immoral. Thank you for posting this.

[Khephra]

2. You're welcome!

:-)

[IndianaGreen]

3. The exit polls were unreliable, to say the least

Why did the networks depend on them? Perhaps is because journalists are too lazy to chase a story. Do you think for one second that the current crop of journalists would have followed the leads in the Watergate break in? Heck, no!

Democratic strategists pay too much attention to polls and focus groups. If you don't know what to believe in, you shouldn't be polling people to find out.