Poll: Character Trumps Policy for Voters

[RedEarth]

WASHINGTON (AP) - For all the policy blueprints churned out by presidential campaigns, there is this indisputable fact: People care less about issues than they do about a candidate's character.

A new Associated Press-Ipsos poll says 55 percent of those surveyed consider honesty, integrity and other values of character the most important qualities they look for in a presidential candidate.

Just one-third look first to candidates' stances on issues; even fewer focus foremost on leadership traits, experience or intelligence.

"Voters only look at policies as a lens into what type of person the candidate is," said Ken Mehlman, chairman of President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. That campaign based its voter targeting and messaging strategies on the character-first theory.

The AP-Ipsos poll of 1,001 adults, conducted Monday through Wednesday, found honesty was by far the most popular single trait - volunteered by 41 percent of voters in open-ended questioning.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070310/D8NPIS381.html