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PRINCETON, NJ -- Most voters in the United States say issues such as healthcare, unemployment, the federal deficit, international issues, and gas prices are important to their presidential vote, but less than half say the same about federal birth control policies.

The government's policies on birth control have received a great deal of visibility in recent months as part of a dispute over the Affordable Care Act's provisions requiring some religious institutions to offer birth control as part of their health insurance plans. Republican presidential candidates and Catholic leaders have criticized the provision, while President Obama has defended it, albeit while making some adjustments designed to make it more palatable to Catholic institutions.

The 44% of registered voters who say that federal government policies on birth control will be important to their vote is substantially lower than the 73% to 80% of voters who say that about the five other issues tested in the poll.

Democrats are significantly more likely than independents or Republicans to say birth control policies will be important to their vote, but even among Democrats, the issue comes in last on the list.

These partisan differences could be partly due to the gender gap in partisan identification. Women are more likely than men to identify as Democrats, and women voters, by a 20-percentage-point margin, 55% to 35%, are significantly more likely than men to rate government policies relating to birth control as important. The higher level of importance for this issue among women could reflect the fundamental facts regarding women's relationship to pregnancy and birth, as well as their reactions to the recent controversy.

The relatively low importance voters assign to government policies on birth control is accompanied by a low level of public knowledge of presidential candidates' positions on the issue. When asked if they agree or disagree with the birth control policies espoused by Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, or Rick Santorum, relatively few voters indicate they know enough to say.

More precisely, 54% of voters offer an opinion, either positive or negative, on Obama's position on birth control, 44% have an opinion on Santorum's position, and 35% an opinion on Romney's position. The slightly higher percentage who have an opinion about Santorum's compared with Romney's position on this issue may reflect the former's high-visibility campaign focus on this and other values issues. Such positions have been instrumental in gaining him support among highly religious Republican voters and in his victories in more conservative Southern state primaries so far this year.

Those who do have an opinion about Obama's position on government policies and birth control split almost evenly between agreement and disagreement. The smaller groups with an opinion on Santorum's or Romney's positions, on the other hand, are more negative than positive. This suggests that the controversy has likely hurt Republicans.

Views of Obama's position are distributed roughly equally along partisan lines, with about half of Democrats agreeing, about half of Republicans disagreeing, and independents evenly split. For the two Republican candidates, however, Republican agreement does not match Democratic and independent disagreement, yielding the overall net negative results.

Implications

In general this year, voters when contrasted with the more dominant issues relating to the economy. The finding that voters place the controversial issue of federal policies about birth control well below economic, healthcare, and international issues confirms this basic fact of political life. Family values issues may be of paramount importance to some smaller segments of the population -- one of a number of so-called niche issues -- but birth control will clearly not be voters' main focus in this campaign.