04.11 US Democrats Use Social Woes to Distract from Economic Issues in Midterms: Experts
WASHINGTON, November 4 (RIA Novosti) - US Democrats are using social issues to divert people's attention from the US economy and unemployment and score with the voters in the US midterm elections, several experts told RIA Novosti on Monday.
"Guns, gays, abortion and marijuana are not the issues in this election except perhaps in Colorado and a few other states," Michael Bernstam, researcher at the Hoover Institute of Stanford University, said. "These are the issues the Democrats tried to put on the front in order to divert attention of the voters from the economy."
Democrats have focused on "social issues" in an attempt to save the party, Bernstam stated.
"The Democrats thought that by changing the themes and issues they would save themselves," Bernstam said. "This has not worked. People worry about the economy, not peripheral issues."
Social issues such as the legalization of marijuana in Alaska, Oregon, Washington DC and Florida are not an issue that will motivate more voters to go to the polls, the Director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida, Kevin Sabet pointed out.
"We know that this is not an issue that motivates voters, so I don't expect higher turnout," Sabet said.
Democrats currently have 55 of the 100 Senate seats and Republicans only need six seats to take over, according to a political news and polling website RealClearPolitics.
Elizabeth Sanders, election expert and government professor at Cornell University, agrees that the economy is still the most important domestic issue to Americans.
"I think the economy is still weighing very heavily there's a sense they are even more worse and indirect than the sense in failure in foreign policy... that the government just doesn't know how to produce prosperity and opportunity," Sanders said.
On Tuesday, voters across the United States will head to the polls to decide on 36 Senate seats, 435 Congressional seats and 36 local governors seats.
In an October Gallup elections poll, 55 percent of respondents said that economic problems and the economy in general were the most important issues that the country faces today, while 10 percent said that unemployment and jobs were the most important. For the non-economic issues, gun rights, abortion, gay rights and drugs were among the least important issues to respondents.
