Poll

Tom Friedman has worked his way back to the idea of energy independence.

Coming in No. 1, with 42 percent, was "reducing dependence on foreign oil." Coming in a distant second at 26 percent was "combating terrorism." Coming in third at 25 percent was "the war in Iraq," and tied at 21 percent were "securing our ports, nuclear plants and chemical factories" and "addressing dangerous countries like Iran and North Korea." "Strengthening America's military" drew 12 percent. Mr. Carville also noted that because their polls are of "likely voters," they have a slight Republican bias — i.e., they aren’t just polling a bunch of liberal greens.[PDF poll]

Unfortunately, I believe this particular poll suffers from a lack of orthogonality. Too many of the concerns rely on combatting terrorism, which essentially ends up splitting the vote N-ways. But if Tom Terrific has spotted a trend, bet that it gets promulgated far and wide.