Foreign affairs, including national security, don’t show among the 14 types of issues in the recent Gallup article, “Government Remains Americans’ Top Problem in 2022”: all of the 14 issue-areas that did show were the top issue for at least 3% of Gallup’s respondents in 2022, and all of them were domestic issues, not international— not foreign-affairs issues. However, one of them was “Immigration,” which was #6 and was the top issue for 6% of the respondents. Though not an international issue, it’s a border issue, and therefore borders on being an international one.
Here are the 14 issues, and the % for each of them:
Government 19%
High cost of living/Inflation 16%
Economy in general 12%
Immigration 6%
Unifying the country 5%
COVID-19 4%
Race relations 4%
Crime 4%
Gas prices 3%
Judicial system 3%
Poverty/Hunger/Homelessness 3%
Abortion 3%
Ethics/Morals 3%
Environment 3%
And here, as reported on November 9th, by the Washington Post, were “How different groups are voting according to exit polls and AP VoteCast”:
Network exit poll
Abortion (27%)
76% [Democrat]
23% [Republican]
Inflation (31%)
28%
71%
Crime (11%)
41%
57%
Immigration (10%)
25%
73%
Gun policy (11%)
60%
37%
About 3 in 10 voters said inflation was the most important issue in their vote according to the exit poll, and roughly 7 in 10 of those voters supported Republicans. Almost as many voters said abortion was their most important issue and those voters supported Democrats by an even wider margin. About 1 in 10 voters each said crime, immigration and gun policy were their most important issues.
The reason why abortion was only 3% in the Gallup polling but was 27% (nine times higher) in the election is that whereas the Gallup number was an average throughout the entire year of Gallup’s sampling American public opinion, the election happened less than six months after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that had ended the national and state laws that had banned abortions; this was a shocker because all of the ‘Justices’ had promised in their confirmation-hearings that they’d respect and adhere-to existing longstanding Supreme-Court precedents, including that one. Apparently, Democratic women became increasingly fearful of the impact that the overturning-decision would have, as Election Day drew closer and news-reports about the decision’s results were published; and, so, election forecasters underestimated the electoral impact that this court-ruling would have. The Republican Donald Trump had done the most of any President to enable Roe to become overturned, and when it was, millions of American women became increasingly terrified and determined to vote.
But, anyway, the U.S. Government can do virtually anything in international affairs and not have any need to worry that it will significantly affect electoral outcomes. Perhaps none of the U.S. Presidential and congressional elections since 1945 would have had any different outcomes if U.S. foreign policies had been different. If foreign affairs are important — and they do constitute (including nation ‘defense’ in all federal Departments, not only the ‘Defense’ Department) the vast majority of the U.S. Government’s discretionary spending — then they nonetheless are quite beyond the reach of whatever democracy might possibly exist in America (which is little-to-none, in any case). Whatever their actual importance may be, the U.S. public doesn’t care, to any significant extent, about such issues.
The post Foreign Affairs are of Virtually No Interest to American Voters first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.
Eric Zuesse | Radio Free (2022-12-21T15:02:24+00:00) Foreign Affairs are of Virtually No Interest to American Voters. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2022/12/21/foreign-affairs-are-of-virtually-no-interest-to-american-voters/
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