January 27, 2020

Survey Results: Climate Change, Health Care On Top

My little weekend survey is finished and the results are in. Here are the top ten policy issues among my readership:

I’m a little surprised that climate change scored only 81 percent. Who are the 19 percent of you who didn’t even put it in your top five?

One thing of note is that most of the top ten consists of economic-ish issues, not hot button culture war stuff—although that doesn’t necessarily mean the culture war stuff is less important to you. I didn’t put abortion in my top five, for example, but that’s not because I don’t care about it. It’s because every Dem candidate shares virtually the same position on it.

For the record, my top five were: climate change, health care, unions, income inequality, and pre-K.

Here are the also-rans:

You guys don’t care about Iran and Iraq at all! Child care, family leave, and pre-K also rate pretty low. Is that because my readership skews male? Or childless? I don’t know.

Based solely on this—which nothing should be—Democratic presidential candidates should probably be talking more about gun control and unions, and less about family leave and opioids. And reparations should be off the table completely.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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