Economy trumps all issues among voters

By Brian MacQuarrie
Globe Staff
Battered by a drumbeat of dire news from the workplace and Wall Street, a wave of American voters went to the polls concerned about the economy and chose Senator Barack Obama as the candidate best equipped to lead the country in a new direction.
Obama also gained the support of women, blacks, and Hispanics to run up a commanding lead over Republican Senator John McCain, according to nationwide exit polls. McCain carried slightly more than half of white voters, but fell far below the 17-point margin that President Bush received in 2004.

Six in 10 voters described the economy as the most important issue to them. And of those voters, six in 10 supported Obama. Nearly all voters said the economy was poor or not good.
Worries about the economy, which had dominated the campaign for two months, dwarfed concerns about the war in Iraq, which only 10 percent of voters labeled their leading priority.
The Democratic senator from Illinois, who trumpeted a vision of transformational change through a 19-month campaign, also won more than half the votes of women and trounced McCain of Arizona among blacks, Hispanics, and first-time voters.
The Iraq war as a voter concern was followed by terrorism and health care, which each drew 9 percent in the poll conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. Energy policy was selected by 7 percent.
Voters clearly linked McCain to the eight-year economic record of President Bush, despite the Republican candidate's pledge to keep taxes low and create jobs. More than 40 percent of voters said their family's finances had deteriorated over the last four years, and nearly two-thirds said they were worried about being able to afford health care.
Obama attracted wide support despite the belief of most voters that he is more likely to raise taxes. Seventy percent said taxes would rise under Obama, compared with 61 percent for McCain.
But significantly more voters, 57 percent to 40 percent, think Obama is more in touch with their concerns than McCain at a time when 93 percent said the economy is slumping or worse. Despite that pessimism, nearly half of voters said they believe the economy will improve in the next year.
Obama, 47, also benefited from the backing of new voters, many of them young and minorities, who supported him at three times the rate they fell behind McCain. Six out of 10 new voters were under the age of 30; about 40 percent of new voters were divided almost evenly between blacks and Hispanics. Half of the new voters were Democrats.
Overall, minorities voted overwhelmingly for Obama, who attracted nearly all black voters and about two-thirds of Hispanics. In 2004, Bush received about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote.
McCain received heavy support from white voters without college degrees and more than half of white voters overall. McCain, 72, also garnered slightly more support from voters over age 65 than Obama.
Race as described as an important factor by only a tiny percentage of voters, the polls indicated. About 60 percent of voters who backed Obama said they believe race relations will improve.
But in Pennsylvania, a battleground where each candidate waged a fierce campaign, Obama showed he could offset a 53 to 46 percent deficit among white men to carry a state where Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton used an overwhelming advantage in rural, white areas to defeat him in the primary.
Obama won white college graduates by a 54 to 45 percent margin, but lost whites who had not graduated from college by the same percentage. However, Obama showed solid strength across a broad range of other demographic categories, winning among all age levels, union households, nearly all income levels, and religions.
In Pennsylvania, Obama received his soundest rejection among supporters of the war. Eighty-three percent of voters who somewhat approve the war supported McCain, and even more than 93 percent of voters who strongly approve the war backed the Republican.
The Edison/Mitofsky poll was conducted for the National Election Pool, which is composed of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, and the Associated Press. More than 10,000 voters were interviewed at random yesterday at more than 1,000 polling places across the nation and in phone interviews over the last week for early voters.