But Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, called critiques of the poll "garbage."
"The people who picked moral values as an issue know what that means," he said. "It's a code word in surveys for a cluster of issues like gay marriage and abortion," he said.
McInturff said if "moral values" was really a catch-all with a confused meaning, then more Democrats would have picked it as well. Of the 22 percent who chose "moral values" in the election-day poll, 80 percent were Bush supporters and 20 percent were Kerry supporters.
"It's self-selected by people for whom these issues are very important for their votes," McInturff said, adding that the margin by which Bush carried these voters arguably made the difference in the election.
Democrats acknowledge its importance, to a degree. "We have things we need to address in our party when it comes to faith and values," said Representative Rahm Emanuel.
"But the question is not a great-worded question, and people are over-reading it," he said.
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