The Issues That Mattered

By MARGARET CARLSON

A visitor from another planet would surely have thought the presidential race was about prison furloughs, the death penalty for drug kingpins, mandatory Pledge of Allegiance and Dan Quayle's IQ. But on Election Day, these hot- button issues turned out to be largely irrelevant. Only 12% of the voters questioned by ABC News said that the Pledge, prison furloughs or Quayle were important to them; just 26% said they were concerned about the death penalty.

Still, the noise generated by these contentious nonissues may have kept voters from focusing on Michael Dukakis' talking points. Of the 40% who told NBC/Wall Street Journal pollsters the deficit should be the top priority of the next President, 57% went for Bush, even though he virtually ignored the deficit in his campaign and promised not to raise taxes. Of the 39% of voters who think a tax increase will be necessary to reduce the budget deficit, 42% voted for Bush anyway.

Among the 21% who considered drugs the most important campaign issue, the vote split evenly, despite Dukakis' efforts to tie Bush to the "drug-running Panamanian dictator" Manuel Noriega. The environment should have been a "gimme" for Dukakis, Gallup found, but Bush stole it by pointing to Boston's polluted harbor. Although Bush has a poor environmental record, he won 48% of the vote among the 72% who believed more money should be spent on the environment; at the same time, Bush won two-thirds of the voters who opposed new environmental spending.

Sixty percent of the voters in the ABC poll said defense spending should stay the same or be increased; not surprisingly, nearly 70% of this group went for Bush. Dukakis got 74% of the minority who think the Pentagon needs less money. Crime -- sometimes a code word for race -- was a winner for the Republicans. In a CBS/New York Times poll, 25% of Bush voters cited crime as a major reason for supporting him.

Of the five issues that were most important to voters surveyed by NBC, Dukakis made his case on just one: among the 21% who believed in continuing programs for the middle class, 64% voted for the Governor.

A general sense of well-being went a long way toward carrying the day for Bush. When asked about the future of the economy, 28% of those questioned by NBC said they thought it would be better, 16% said worse, and 48% said about the same. Dukakis won 73% of the small minority of pessimists, but Bush captured 61% of the optimists and 58% of the middle group. And Ronald Reagan had coattails: of the 53% who approved of the job the President is doing, 86% voted for Bush. The Vice President also got a tremendous boost from his ! resume. Those who counted experience as the most important factor in their choice backed Bush by an overwhelming majority, 94% to 6% in the ABC poll. ABC also found that voters rated Bush highly as being trustworthy and a strong leader.

But going negative had its cost. According to the Associated Press, 13% of the voters who backed Bush and 19% of those who favored Dukakis said they made their choice primarily out of dislike for the other candidate, a reminder of Henry Adams' warning that politics can be the systematic organization of hatreds. Without a clear sense of what the candidates stood for, many voters only knew what they did not want.