Civics Survey Results

Young Master Nordeaster's final group project was administering, tabulating and presenting a political opinion survey of classmates, family and friends. One question asked you to focus on the main issue on which you base your vote. Another interesting one asked you to list the top 3 moral issues facing American politics. Both these questions were open ended. As you will probably be able to guess from the results, YMN attends a private christian academy, not a public school.

The concept of putting political issuess in terms of morality is an interesting angle. We've all heard the saying, primarily from liberals, that you can't and shouldn't legislate morality. In reality, the purpose of almost all legislation is to legislate morality. Many, like me, think high taxes are immoral. Others, like Archbishop Flynn think it is immoral to not have high tax rates. Environmentalists feel it is a moral imperative to save the earth by banning DDT, while others find it immoral that so many die of malaria due to the ban. The degree to which the war on terror is prosecuted is a moral issue. Unsafe working conditions would be considered immoral by many, and on and on.

Here are some of the results:

Age of Participants:
Under 18 - 68%
18 to 30 - 16%
31 and over - 16%


Party Affiliation:
Republican - 70%
Democrat - 9%
Other - 7%
Don't Know - 14%

Oh, if only those were the numbers for the total US.


Main topic on which you base your vote:
Character - 32%
Blank or Don't Know - 20%
Abortion - 11%
Moral Issues - 11%
Economy - 7%
Marriage - 5%
War and Defense - 5%
Other - 9%

FYI - My personal response was individual rights (e.g. free speech, religious expression, personal property, etc). I was torn between that and defense, and it was very difficult to choose just one. Perhaps the fact that I'm reading Ayn Rand's first novel swayed me to that direction.

With this group I expected Abortion to be much higher. I was surprised that character was such a domininant winner. This is not a representative sample, but maybe I over-estimate the percentage of single issue abortion voters, even among a fairly evangelical population.


What are the top 3 moral issues facing America?
Abortion 28%
Marriage 22%
Defense & War 14%
Church/state 8%
Stem Cell 4%
Right to Die 3%
Individual Rights 3%
Taxes 2%
Property 2%
All Others or Blank - 16%


Other responses:

95% believed a fetus is a human being.
84% believed abortion should be illegal, of those 38% felt there should be exceptions
98% attend church (although the question should have broken it into weekly or more, once or twice a month, occasionally, never).


For the general public, there's really not much to take away from a non-representative, unscientific survey like this. For me, it's nice to know that a lot of my son's classmates, friends and friend's families value character and life. I'm glad his school offers a real civics class. I wish all did (civics not civic activism). Now if we could only put one together for the Dems on the judicial committee.