What's Important to the Voters?

Jim Geraghty consults the recent CNN poll to see what issues are of greatest concern to voters. It turns out that what voters care about is not at all what either presidential candidate seems to care about:

Joe Biden would love for this year’s election to be about forgiving student loans, union jobs, climate change, gun control, abortion, those oh-so-plausible tales of him saving six people from drowning as a lifeguard, how he was arrested for standing with a black family during protests of desegregation, and how he was “runner-up in state scoring” in football . . . until his teenage asthma kept him out of the draft for Vietnam.

Donald Trump wants this election to be about how unfairly he’s been treated and how he’s being persecuted for his political views, how he was the real winner in the 2020 presidential election, and how he embodies “retribution” for his supporters.

So what are the major concerns of the electorate?

The average American voter is desperately yearning for a candidate who would just focus on fighting inflation and getting the cost of living under control. Yes, American voters have other priorities, but that is the most-often-mentioned priority by a wide margin.

Don’t take it from me, take it from this weekend's CNN poll which had Trump ahead of Biden, 49 percent to 43 percent:

In the new poll, 65% of registered voters call the economy extremely important to their vote for president. . . .

Considering other issue priorities for the upcoming election, 58% of voters call protecting democracy an extremely important issue, the only other issue tested that a majority considers central to their choice.

Nearly half call immigration, crime and gun policy deeply important (48% each), with health care (43%), abortion (42%) and nominations to the US Supreme Court (39%) each deeply important to about 4 in 10 voters.

At the lower end of the scale, just 33% consider foreign policy that important, 27% climate change, 26% the war between Israel and Hamas, and 24% student loans.

You get slightly different answers when Americans are asked which issue is their top priority, compared to whether an issue is important to their vote for president; more on that in a moment.

The average American doesn’t lose any sleep thinking about climate change, gun control, LGBTQ+ rights, DEI initiatives, or whether the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have access to enough food. This is not to say that if the average American doesn’t think about an issue very much, it doesn’t matter.

In other words, neither the issues pressed by Mr. Biden's progressive handlers nor Mr. Trump's grievances are foremost in the minds of most voters. It'll be interesting to see how the candidates seek to deal with his fact once the campaign gets underway in earnest this summer.

Meanwhile, check out the rest of Geraghty's column at the link.