Social Issues: Not That Important Anymore?

Looking over yesterday’s Washington Post poll, a few numbers stuck out. First, of all the issues surveyed, only one issue was below 40% in terms of importance to voters, that is social issues at 39%. *

Moreover, Obama is trusted more to handle social issues by a wide margin: 56% to 32%.

The poll found that a strong majority of people felt that Obama shared their values, 56% for to 39% against. By contrast, 47% found that McCain shared their values to 49% that McCain did not share their values. (Obviously, this included a number of conservatives who are doing the “holding their nose to vote for McCain” routine.)

These numbers beg a question: is the era of social issues being a strong influence in elections over? Or is it just on pause because of economic problems and two wars overseas? I’d say the economic problems have a stronger influence than foreign policy problems, but after the high voltage campaigning in 2004 over social issues with little payoff for either conservatives or liberals, people seem to have just shrugged it off and moved on. Moreover, it’s clear that the next generation of voters is a lot more liberal/libertarian on these social issues than the previous one.

I think it’s possible that we’ve reached a tipping point where a lot of social issues mean a lot less. The one exception I would note is abortion: I doubt that will ever really go away as an issue; it will just fade in an out as a top issue.

(The only other issue one under 50% was VP choices; clearly the people understand how to ignore that, even if the media does not. And the third least important issue is gun control, right at 50%. A strong amount of people know that Heller has really settled that issue in most significant ways. Just noting that the wisdom of the people often surpasses that of the media.)