Oct. 5 (UPI) — As is traditionally the case, the vast majority of Americans say the U.S. economy is their chief concern ahead of the presidential election, a Gallup survey showed Monday.
According to the poll, about nine in 10 respondents identified the economy as “extremely” (44%) or “very” (45%) important to their vote.
“It is not surprising that voters overall rate the economy as the most important issue impacting their vote for president this year given the fragile state of the U.S. economy and their tendency historically to prioritize it and other issues such as national security and education,” Gallup wrote.
The economy was followed on the list by national security and terrorism (83%), education (82%), healthcare (80%), crime (79%), the COVID-19 response (77%) and race relations (76%).
Among Republicans, the most important issues are the economy (93%), national security and terrorism (93%) and crime (85%).
Among Democrats, healthcare (95%) topped the list, followed by the COVID-19 response (93%) and race relations (89%).
“The largest gap between partisans is in how important they consider climate change — 88% of Democrats rate it as important compared with 23% of Republicans,” Gallup added. “Wide disparities are also seen in the importance of healthcare, the response to the coronavirus (32 points) and race relations (27 points).
“At the same time, Republicans place significantly more emphasis than Democrats do on several other key voting issues, including terrorism or national security (22 points) and taxes (18 points).”
Gallup interviewed more than 1,000 U.S. adults for the survey, which has a margin of error of 4 points.
