All Over Albany

AOA Exit Poll 2010 important issues

Here are the results of the "What was the most important issue to you?" question from AOA's informal exit poll. (We posted results from the multiple choice questions earlier this week.)

You can probably guess what some of the top issues are. But we were a bit surprised by just how irked people seem to be by the screwed-up state of government.

Results and a few notes after the jump.

A quick note about these results: We got 133 responses to the exit poll. The total issue count exceeds that number because some people mentioned more than one issue (also, there were a few responses that were basically blank). We sorted the free-form responses into categories, a process that involves a fair bit of subjectivity.

There's a graph above listing issues with more than two mentions.

Issues sorted by mention

A few notes

+ We were surprised by how many people cited good government as issue. And the mentions were largely non-partisan -- people just seemed to want leaders who would try to do a good job and not embarrass the state. People just seem beaten down by the constant dysfunction. Said one person:

Keeping out the candidates who would be an embarrassment. For me it's more about avoiding the negative than really have a feeling there's something positive to be gained.

+ We split "jobs" and "the economy." Those could very well have been the same category -- and if so, it would have been #1.

+ We were also struck by how many people seemed to be voting against something (Tea Party, for example), rather than for something.

+ And in case there was any doubt, the rent apparently really is too damn high.

One more thing: Congratulations to Summer -- her name was drawn at random for the Daily Show book.