Galveston County Daily News, July 22, 2007 GALVESTON - When island and mainland residents agree about what's important - which is seldom - it's traffic, crime, the economy, high city taxes and public education. But perhaps surprisingly, the ideological divide symbolized by the causeway isn't as gaping on issues of gambling, abortion, stem cell research, environment and government spending on the poor as voting patterns in the county might suggest. Residents of the island and mainland also share similar attitudes when it comes to worries about unchecked development, loss of green space and the possibility of terrorist attacks in the Houston-Galveston region. Such are the revelations in the first-ever Galveston County Survey, which compares responses among island and mainland residents to nearly 100 questions. There still are some cavernous differences in attitudes about the death penalty, gay marriage, welfare and immigration. But overall, the survey's results surprised demographers, who say they expected attitudes about most hot-button questions to differ significantly between the island and mainland participants. "I saw consistently through the survey that the island is more liberal in most attitudes than the mainland, but the differences weren't that large," said Dr. Karl Eschbach, associate professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch's Center for Population Health and Health Disparities.