Voters thinking about economy, health care

WASHINGTON -- Kitchen table worries pushed ahead of the war in Iraq over the past month, a shift toward pocketbook issues that has gained currency as the election year dawns.

More than half the voters in an ongoing survey for the Associated Press and Yahoo News say the economy and health care are extremely important to them personally. They fear they will face unexpected medical expenses, their homes will lose value, or mortgage and credit-card payments will overwhelm them.

Events, however, can quickly change public opinion. Thursday's assassination of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto could draw more attention to terrorism and national security, an issue that ranked high with the public and which 45 percent of those polled considered extremely important.

This latest AP-Yahoo News survey of more than 1,800 people by Knowledge Networks offers an opportunity to track changes in public attitudes as the presidential campaign unfolds. The first poll was last month and set a baseline to measure national sentiment.

In the new results, men and women approaching retirement were especially attentive to the economy and health care, with six out of 10 ranking both issues as extremely important. Politically, the attention to such domestic issues hangs darkly over Republicans.

Voters say they are far more likely to trust Democrats to handle the economy and health care.

Consider Linda Zimmerman, a 50-year-old sheep farmer from Thurmont, Md. Her daughter and son-in-law are having trouble keeping up with two mortgages on a town house, she said. One street in her neighborhood has five homes for sale, and one has been on the market for two years.

Registered as a Republican, she's ready to reconsider.

"We're Republicans and I'm very unhappy with them, and I've been watching the Democrats," she said. "We did better when (Bill) Clinton was in than we did with Bush. It's just terrible."

The Democratic edge on such issues illustrates the predicament Republicans face going into a presidential election. Iraq doesn't dominate the news as it used to, replaced by headlines about slumping home sales, high gasoline prices and a credit crunch.

The impact of Bhutto's assassination on public opinion depends on whether Americans perceive her death as an added threat to the United States.

Terrorism was the only issue polled that Republicans were more trusted than Democrats to handle well.

Republican Rudy Giuliani had benefited most from people's fears of terrorism. But over the past month, his level of support dropped, even among voters who said terrorism was an important issue.

Giuliani is now trying to get some of those voters back, releasing an ad Thursday that uses images of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on New York.

All in all, though, voters appear to be weighing other issues at least as heavily as the country heads into the first voting of the presidential election.Financial worries have risen in prominence.

Forty-eight percent of those polled said Social Security is extremely important to them, up from 42 percent in November. That's virtually the same as the 46 percent who considered Iraq extremely important.

These new public concerns are reflected on the campaign trail, where candidates are hitting domestic topics hard.