Following the midterm elections, the polls and the press told us that the war in Iraq and government corruption were the two most important factors in creating a new Congress. But a little-known exit poll conducted of 1,000 midterm election voters on November 7 for the Alliance to End Hunger found that a candidate's stand on hunger and poverty issues has a big effect on how voters cast their ballots.

A representative sample of Republican, Democrat, and Independent mid-term voters across all 50 states found that:

- 65% said hunger and poverty were important to them in deciding their vote and 61% said the candidates' focus on these issues during the 2006 election was "inadequate";

- Three-quarters (73%) approve of an expanded effort by the next Congress to reduce hunger in the United States and worldwide, even if it means new federal expenditures;

- Fully 80% of those surveyed say that a presidential contender's stand on hunger and poverty is important to how they will vote in 2008.

Hunger and poverty are not just concerns of the Democrats: 75% of Republicans say these issues are important to their choice of President in 2008, and a whopping 70% of the all-important Independents said they were dissatisfied with the amount of time candidates spent on these issues in the 2006 campaign. These voters are telling candidates that ignoring hunger and poverty will hurt their campaigns.

It's not often that serious social issues are treated as "serious" by campaigners. I suspect they are often treated as "nice to have" additions to the resume. You've got to have them listed to indicate you're a good person, but they really don't count towards the job. But those of us who have worked in the nonprofit world have seen a change in attitudes - and in actual behavior - among our donors, volunteers and even corporate partners towards issues like hunger, and I imagine that most of us are not surprised by the survey's findings. People are tired of alleviating the symptoms, and want real cures for society's ills. Corporate partners are increasingly applying their assets, employees, and marketing talents towards things like fixing the country's schools and curing AIDS. When I talk about Share Our Strength's strategy for ending childhood hunger in the United States, the response is rarely "Oh, that's nice," but often "That's exciting, and it's about time."

We in the anti-hunger community have learned that numbers and impact measurements count when we're making the argument to invest in our cause. We talk about "return on investment" and we've commissioned independent studies that we show to government and to companies. Sometimes these fall on deaf ears. Just this last week, for example, the USDA changed the very name it uses for hunger to instead call it "very low food security." But I believe ultimately that the largest outcry about the indignity of hunger and poverty will not come from the hunger community, but from the people themselves: rich and poor, Republican and Democrat, who regard 35 million hungry Americans as intolerable.

The midterm exit poll may be the beginning of that outcry. As they say in politics: "the people have spoken."