Michigan Exit Polls: It’s the Economy, Stupid

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Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the country and a badly hurting economy. It isn’t surprising, then, that roughly 50 percent of Michigan primary voters (Republicans only, since the Dems had a meaningless contest tonight) picked the economy as the most important issue. Just 26 percent of Republican caucus-goers said the same in Iowa, and 31 percent of voters said the same in New Hampshire’s Republican primary. Seven of ten voters in the Minnesota primary said they were unhappy with the primary economy. [Ed. Note: My mistake.]

Twenty percent of voters today said Iraq is the most important issue, 15 percent said immigration, and 10 percent said terrorism.

It appears that Mitt Romney won economically minded voters tonight, perhaps because he has the most experience of any of the candidates in the private sector, and spent years at Bain turning companies around.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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