This article is from the archive of our partner .
Republicans are more likely to favor a government focused on deficit reduction, a strong military, and moral issues; Democrats want to protect the environment, bolster education, and help the poor. The agenda more favored by Republicans seems to control the debate in Washington, probably not coincidentally because wealthy Americans are promoting it.
Pew Research released its annual look at America's political priorities Monday. For the first time since President Obama took office, addressing the budget deficit has declined in importance, largely because Democrats don't rank it as high. (Perhaps in part because the deficit has regularly declined since 2009.) What's most interesting is Pew's look at how the priorities of Republicans and Democrats differ. We've created the table below, which ranks issues from those more important to Republicans to those more important to Democrats (the "Diff" column is the percentage-point difference between the parties). It also compares the responses of independents to the other two parties. ("D: 6," for instance, means that independents are six percentage points more likely to agree with Democrats than Republicans on the issue.)