* Finke writes about the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute poll…

One of those was on the disclosure of financial or conflict-of-interest information by candidates. Most of them got pretty overwhelming support from the respondents, in that they said something was either very important or somewhat important for a candidate to disclose.

The poll asked things like how important is it to know if a candidate has real estate or other investments that may benefit from actions by the government? More than 92 percent think that’s either very important or somewhat important to know.

Interestingly, one of the lower rated items was disclosure of income tax returns. That’s become almost a routine demand of some candidates for office and at times a campaign issue when the returns aren’t released. Yet, only 79 percent thought releasing tax returns was very or somewhat important.

Obviously, a lot of people still think it’s important, but maybe not as much as the hoopla over releasing tax returns might suggest.

Voters don’t agree on much of anything these days. So when 79 percent of voters agree on something, that’s a huge amount.

* It turns out, however, that the issue is lots more important to Democrats and independents than Republicans. From the crosstabs…

Still, 65 percent of Republicans is pretty darned high as well.