While moral values were considered by voters to be the single most important issue in the 2004 elections, E.J. Dionne points to recent polls that show a steady decline of interest as the economy fails:
The interest in moral values has collapsed—from 22 percent in the exit poll (and 27 percent in Pew’s own post-2004 election survey) to a mere 10 percent. Concern over the economy and jobs more than doubled, from 20 percent in the 2004 exit poll to 50 percent in the new survey. The other issues that gained substantial ground were health care and education.
The drop in concern over moral values was particularly sharp among older working-class voters who have been trending Republican for years. Moral issues, said Andrew Kohut, the president of the Pew Research Center, are “less pressing, especially to the populist conservatives who are feeling great economic pressures these days.”
[…]Conservative moral values voters have become the heart of the Republican coalition, and if their ranks are shrinking, so is the GOP’s base. And it is no accident that President Obama takes every opportunity to shift the public debate to issues—the economy, health care and education—that the populist conservatives Kohut describes are most likely to find appealing.
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