Is illegal immigration your “most important issue” in the 2018 election? Let me guess: You’re a Republican.
A new Pew research study shows just how divided we are as a nation.
We can’t even decide what the most important issues are.
Republicans overwhelmingly think illegal immigration is the top issue.
Yet they show little concern for Democratic concerns like health care, climate change, racism and gun control.
Pew polled 10,000 Americans last month.
The survey found that, when you break us out by political party, we often have totally different notions about what the biggest issues facing the country are.
This chart sums it up:
Majorities of registered voters who support Democratic candidates for Congress rate 13 of 18 issues as “very big” problems facing the country. Among voters who favor the Republican candidates in their districts, majorities rate only five issues as very big problems.
More striking, several of the issues that rank among the most serious problems among Democratic voters – including how minorities are treated by the criminal justice system, climate change, the rich-poor gap, gun violence and racism – are viewed as very big problems by fewer than a third of Republican voters.
For example, 71% of Democratic voters say the way racial and ethnic minorities are treated by the criminal justice system is a very big problem for the country, compared with just 10% of Republican voters. Other issues have a similarly large partisan gap: Democratic voters are 61 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say climate change is a very big problem and are 55 points more likely to say this about the gap between the rich and poor.
By contrast, illegal immigration is the highest-ranked national problem among GOP voters, but it ranks lowest among the 18 issues for Democratic voters (75% and 19%, respectively, say it is a very big problem).
There are a few issues that similar shares of voters in both parties regard as major national problems. About six-in-ten (61%) Republican voters say the federal budget deficit is a very big problem, as do 56% of Democrats. In addition, there are modest differences on violent crime (49% of Republicans, 47% of Democrats) and drug addiction (67% of Republicans, 64% of Democrats).
Only about half of registered voters younger than 30 (48%) say partisan control of Congress really matters, the lowest percentage for any age group and nearly 40 points lower than the share of voters 65 and older (83%) saying this. Young voters also are less likely than older voters to say they know a great deal or fair amount about the candidates running in their districts and to express satisfaction with the quality of candidates.
I think that sexism, racism, wages and the cost of living, jobs for all Americans, the gap between the poor and rich, gun violence, climate change, the way minorities get treated in criminal justice, affordability of college and health care is far more important right now. Because its affecting all of us right now.