On the Issues: Introduction

By Best in Moderation

Elections revolve around issues people care about. Regardless of the show that various media and interest groups put on, in the end each voter has to make a choice, not only to vote, but also what that vote will count for and mean to them.

Because of this, pollsters, analysts and pundits love to talk about what issues are driving people's decision making process. Some of these issues are static, like the economy, and others are topical, like abortion or gun regulation. Every election, lists are created, polls are done, and in the end candidates try to reach out to the voter interest group that matches their plan the most (or, many times, adjust their plans to said interest groups).

It's not easy to figure out what drives people to act. And if you go through all the polls and research (which is exhausting, by the way) you'll find that the methods we have to study this are far from complete or accurate. Most groups gather some topics and then ask people how important they are to them. Very few have an open session where you can write in anything you like; those that do often still try to group the answers into understandable categories.

So in this series, I am going to do my very best to gather information to get a general idea of which issues people care about, by aggregating all sources into one issues list. Some of the topic might surprise you, and others will be left out and you may think they should not be. Feel free to plug them in the discussion below, but the ones listed are the ones I found to come up most often and be listed as most important overall.

One important thing to note is that very little information is known about how much Americans care about processes, instead of issues. Impeachment, abuse of power, government law breaking and norm shattering are not issues that are often asked about, so little information is available for analysis in how far this influences decision making. I won't, therefore, be including it, even though I know many of you here are pushed by these topics and motivated to act based on them.

If it helps, I have found that if these are your top issues, you probably only use it to determine which party to support, not which candidate. Since this series is focused on where candidates stand on issues, it isn't all that relevant. I will include one section at the end of this series on those topics, under governing.

And I'm also tired of talking about them, to be honest. Everything that needs to be said has been said.

Without further delay, these are the issues found to be the most important to the US electorate in 2020, in the order I've aggregated:

1. Healthcare
2. Security (cyber, national, but excluding immigration)
3. Gun Policies
4. Climate Change
5. The Economy and Trade
6. Education
7. Immigration
8. Wealth distribution
9. Abortion
10. Deficit and Taxes
11. Social Identity Issues

To reduce the list, and make it a bit easier for me, I will combine security and immigration as well as the economy and trade, wealth distribution and deficit and taxes, leaving us with the following topics and OP's coming up:

1. Healthcare
2. Security (cyber, national, and immigration)
3. Gun Policies
4. Climate Change
5. The Economy, Trade, Wealth and Taxes
6. Education
7. Abortion
8. Social Identity Issues
9. Governance

This series will examine each of these issues and bring up their elements, and then look at the candidates and their stances on them. My hope is you can use this to have educated discussions about the topics and then find for yourself which candidate best represents you in the ones that matter most to you.

For now, I'm curious as to what order you would put these in, or if there are topics you'd want to see in there as well.

Have at! :-)