Economic here means “bread and butter” issues-employment, inflation, social insurance programs, health care, infrastructure, unionization, and the like while sociocultural means the issues associated with the Culture Wars such as abortion, gay marriage, gun control, and so forth.
Economic issues hands down for me.
Qin, you ever gonna learn to warn people about a public poll?
My apologies, I thought 1) this wasn’t that personal or controversial an issue that one would be significantly adverse to stating his or her preference and 2) that the notice given before voting would be sufficient.
Generally economic but it depends on a number of factors like what the office is, current conditions, likely state of other key governmental bodies they’d have to work with, etc.
For President I weight foreign policy above domestic issues, whether economic or social. That does have an aspect of economics such as negotiating trade agreements.
Actually, I tend to put “Sociocultural” issues first.
In my opinion, stated attitudes toward how one relates to neighbours, and tolerance for differing religious opinions is a very good indicator of how a candidate will govern.
If someone is willing to allow other’s to make their own decisions on sexual matters and what they do on Sunday mornings, that’s good.
Economics will usually take care of itself.
The USA is already a highly prosperous and high-standard-of-living country, so I vote socio-cultural. It doesn’t make much practical difference whether the USA’s GDP is $15 trillion or $16 trillion; it’s a very prosperous nation either way (but if America’s GDP were much poorer and less developed, only $3 trillion, then a gain or loss of a trillion *would *be a big deal.)
If it “takes care of itself” by funneling almost all the gains of growth to the uberrich, as it has been doing lately, that is a problem.