Just 18 percent of those polled chose immigration as the key issue, making it a distant second for the group of 560 respondents. It closely trailed energy which 14 percent of respondents said was their most critical issue in the campaign.

Surprisingly, the six other major technology issues listed in the poll barely moved the needle. Education, usually a hot-button issue in the high tech community, garnered just four percent of the votes. Electronic health, funding basic research and patent reform tied at two percent each. Broadband policy got just one percent of the vote, and no one voted for Internet policies.

The results suggest the rising fears of a recession are overtaking traditional and longer-term concerns among engineers and high tech executives.

The poll went live Friday, January 25. Respondents were asked which issue they considered most important and were not required to provide any demographic information.

Although traditional high tech issues did not rank high in the EE Times poll, technologists continue to press their policy agenda on several fronts.

A growing chorus of technologists is calling for a presidential debate focused on science issues. The American Association for the Advancement of Science and George Scalise, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) are among those who have in recent weeks joined a call for a science debate.

The Science Debate 2008 effort is supported by about a dozen Nobel laureates as well as a growing group of technology, business and government leaders including Russell Lefevre, president of the IEEE-USA, John Hennessy, president of Stanford University, J. Craig Venter, chairman of the Institute for Genomic Research and Peter Norvig, a director of research at Google.

President George Bush used his final State of the Union address to call for doubling the federal budget for basic research. He also said the U.S. should establish a $2 billion fund for clean technologies.

Democratic candidates have pushed for similar moves, although they generally want to spend even more on green technologies with Senator Barak Obama (D., Ill.) calling for up to $150 billion over ten years on energy technology. TechNet, the lobbying group of senior technology executives formed in 1997, quickly praised Bush for the moves.

Shortly after the address the SIA lobbied for both parties to deliver the increases in basic research funding as well as permanent R&D tax credits. Legislators have passed backed measures clearing the way for both moves but so far have failed to pass funding bills enacting them.

"During the past two years we have witnessed the emergence of a strong bipartisan consensus on actions needed to ensure that America's technology companies can compete effectively in the global economy," said Scalise of the SIA in a prepared statement. "Unfortunately, that consensus has not resulted in action," he added.

Just before the Statue of the Union message, Arthur Bienenstock, president of the American Physical Society, called for a letter writing campaign in support of boosting research funding.

Funding cuts planned in the fiscal 2008 federal budget "wipe out $1 billion in increases approved last summer for the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science and the NIST laboratories, does irreparable damage to science and abandons the innovation initiatives of Congress and the Administration," Bienenstock wrote in a letter to the group. "These actions are severely damaging to the U.S. standing in the international scientific community," he added.

In late January, the Georgia Institute of Technology released a study that ranked China ahead of the U.S. in its technology prowess. The study ranked 33 nations on their success in exporting high technology products. It used various statistics and expert opinions to gauge national orientation toward technological competitiveness, socioeconomic infrastructure, technological infrastructure and industrial capacity.

The study gave China a technological standing of 82.8, compared to 76.1 for the United States, 66.8 for Germany and 66.0 for Japan. Just 11 years ago, China's score was only 22.5. The United States peaked in 1999 with a score of 95.4.