Obama Campaign Avoiding Voter Priorities

A recent Gallup poll shows that voters in the 2012 election think creating good jobs is the most important issue at hand. When asked

“How important a priority should each of the following issues be for the next president — extremely important, very important, somewhat important, or not that important,” 92% of the individuals surveyed ranked ‘creating good jobs’ as extremely/very important. Supporters of Romney and Obama alike ranked 'creating jobs' as the second most important priority for the next President, only behind federal budget deficit among Romney supporters and healthcare for Obama supports. This emphases on jobs creation makes sense, considering the steady decline of employment this year and the back to back to back bad jobs reports that seem to come every month.

These numbers are consistent and recurring, so why does president Obama skirt the topic of jobs in his re-election campaign? The answer seems obvious to us: because his record won’t stand. President Obama would rather not address the issue most important to his people than risk facing the consequences of his own numbers. Correspondent Byron York writes on the data from the survey:

“President Obama’s top domestic agenda item, increasing taxes on wealthy Americans, came in at the bottom of the list, called extremely or very important by just 49 percent of those polled by Gallup.  Dealing with environmental concerns such as global warming was next-to-last, at 52 percent. Making college education available and affordable, a priority Obama often stresses is stump speeches, was third-to-last, at 69 percent. And making healthcare available and affordable was fifth-to-last, at 74 percent.”

On top of this, President Obama’s laser-like focus on Mitt Romney and his shortcomings in campaign ads seems to have had little effect. According to a recent poll by The Hill, “voters see little difference between the candidates on character issues that Democrats have cited as key to Obama’s appeal.” So not only is the President, presumably “tactically,” ignoring the most important topics, his strategizing is not working in his favor. He is not damaging Mitt Romney's image to the point that it will dissuade voters, in fact, the numbers suggest that his ads are not doing much damage at all.  From all this, it is very clear that Obama is nowhere near the same page as those people who will be checking the box come November, and this could be a decisive factor against him in the race unless he makes a change.

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