By David Vitrano

L’Observateur

LAPLACE – Although the election is still more than a year away, campaign season for presidential candidates has begun in earnest with a number of Republicans already throwing their hats in the ring.

Last week, there was even a debate in New Hampshire among some of the GOP candidates.

With election season heating up, last week L’Observateur asked visitors to its website what the most important issue for them was when picking a candidate to vote for.

It seems most of the respondents have the economy on their minds as that issue far surpassed any other as most important for voters. It garnered nearly 80 percent of the vote.

Coming in a distant second was education, which managed to get 7 percent of the vote.

Two of the biggest hot-button issues during the last presidential election, health care and foreign policy/foreign conflicts, combined for just 10 percent of the vote.

Rounding out the list was the usually all-important taxes. Although many elections in the past have been won based largely on a candidate’s position on taxes, the matter managed just 3 percent of the vote.

A full breakdown of results follows:

• 79 percent of respondents chose “the economy.”

• 5 percent of respondents chose “health care.”

• 5 percent of respondents chose “foreign policy/foreign conflicts.”

• 7 percent of respondents chose “education.”

• 3 percent of respondents chose “taxes.”