Poll ax: putin, ISIS and kids on the border sharpen security as a cutting-edge issue in an election that jobs, Obamacare and schools were supposed to shape.

• Author: Hood, John
• Position: Free & Clear

If you had asked me a year ago to predict what issues would dominate the 2014 election, my list would have included job creation, health care and education. National security, foreign policy and immigration wouldn't have made the cut. I'd have been confident in my forecast--confident and wrong.

To be sure, the economy remains the top concern for most voters, in North Carolina and in the rest of the country. Health care and education will clearly be important and could become more so during the last weeks of the campaign as premium increases on the Affordable Care Act exchanges become public and groups supporting Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan ramp up their attacks on Republican challenger Thom Tillis' education record as speaker of the N.C. House.

But in the wake of violent chaos in the Middle East, the beheadings of American journalists in Iraq, another Russian invasion of Ukraine, another immigration crisis on the U.S. southern border and renewed tensions with China, voter interest in national security is clearly rising. A mid-August poll by the Pew Research Center showed that two-thirds of Americans believe the world is becoming more dangerous and 54% say President Barack Obama's foreign policy is "not tough enough." Another mid-August poll, this one of likely North Carolina voters by Boston-based Suffolk University and USA Today, asked respondents to pick the issue most likely to sway their votes for U.S. House and Senate this year. While 22% said jobs or the economy and 18% said health care, a fifth of the state's electorate said either immigration (11%) or national security (9%). Another recent poll of North Carolinians, taken by a private firm for the state Republican Party, found that foreign policy and security issues ranked third on the list of voter concerns, behind the economy and education.

The phenomenon demonstrates how unpredictable an election cycle can be. While candidates and political organizations have no choice but to plan their campaigns with the best-available information, reality tends to intrude. Natural disasters strike. Wars break out. Thugs do thuggish things. Politicians say dumb things. The subject matter and tenor of a campaign can take a sudden turn. If there is, indeed, a resurgence of "security voters" in 2014, North Carolina would certainly be a likely setting. Even more than the average state, we are directly affected by overseas events. Many of the country's rapid-response military forces are based at...