2022 Midterm Elections: What are the main issues that matter most to American voters?
The election is tomorrow and a lot of polling has been conducted to decipher the most pressing issues for American voters. What are they?
Voting day is mere hours away for the midterm elections.The Democrats and Republicans have wheeled out their veteran leaders over the last few days like some geriatric trooping-of-the-colour. On show has been President Joe Biden as well as former presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
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Voters may not care for the big names, however. There have been seriously pressing issues for voters of immediate consequence; the economy, healthcare, and abortion. The star-power of Obama and Trump begins to fade if food is too expensive to put on the table.
Predictably the economy is dominating discussions around the election. According to a new NBC News poll 81% of respondents were either somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the state of the economy, while only 19% were satisfied. This is the lowest satisfaction since 2010 in the immediate aftermath of the banking crisis.
Pollsters Gallup note that the high cost of living as well as the general economy are the two most important problems facing the US. Axios also has a tracker analysing searches by people in the US during the run-up to the election. Jobs and taxes were the two most searched topics for nearly the entire period of 23 May to today.
Third on that Gallup list is the government. If these three are voters most pressing issues, which it seems they are, then the Democrats are in for a rough ride on Tuesday. Furthermore the Republican party leads by an 11 percentage point margin under the polling question of ‘Which political party do you think can do a better job of handling the problem you think is most important.’
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What could this translate to on election night?
The most recent polling aggregation by Politico leaves the Senate in a toss-up. However, a number of outlets believe the House will flip to the Republicans.
At present, the Democrats hold 220 seats, the Republicans have 212 and there are three seats currently vacant in the 535-seat chamber. If the vacant seats were counted with the parties of their original occupants the Republicans would need just a five-seat swing to take the lower legislative house.