About those exit polls

Much heat but little light has come from the infamous exit polls that so many have written about. Check out Charles Krauthammers' column which logically debunks the "it's moral values, stupid white evangelicals!" story. Key excerpt:

Its origins lie in a single question in the Election Day exit poll.
The urban myth grew around the fact that ``moral values'' ranked highest in the
answer to Question J: ``Which ONE issue mattered most in deciding how you voted
for president?''
It is a thin reed upon which to base a General
Theory of the '04 Election. In fact, it is no reed at all. The way the question
was set up, moral values was sure to be ranked disproportionately high. Why?
Because it was a multiple-choice question and moral values cover a group of
issues, while all the other choices were individual issues. Chop up the
alternatives finely enough, and moral values is sure to get a bare plurality
over the others.
Look at the choices:
-- Education, 4 percent --
Taxes, 5 percent -- Health Care, 8
percent -- Iraq, 15 percent --
Terrorism, 19 percent -- Economy and Jobs, 20
percent -- Moral Values, 22
percent
``Moral values'' encompasses abortion, gay
marriage, Hollywood's influence, the general coarsening of the culture, and, for
some, the morality of pre-emptive war. The way to logically pit this class of
issues against the others would be to pit it against other classes: ``war
issues'' or ``foreign policy issues'' (Iraq plus terrorism) and ``economic
issues'' (jobs, taxes, health care, etc).
If you pit
group against group, moral values comes in dead last: war issues at 34 percent,
economic issues variously described at 33 percent, and moral values at 22
percent -- i.e., they are at least a third less salient than the others.