(AFP) – Americans voting in the November 3 midterm elections will decide who controls Congress for the final two years of Donald Trump’s presidency, along with dozens of governorships and thousands of state offices. The campaign is playing out against an unusually combustible mix of economic anxiety, war, immigration battles, corruption concerns, and unease over rapidly expanding artificial intelligence.
Polls asking voters about priorities use different methodologies, but they broadly agree on the dominance of pocketbook concerns. A Pew survey found economic issues easily topped voters’ worries, while a September Emerson poll put the Iran war, jobs, tariffs, gas prices, immigration, and AI regulation among the most important factors in voting decisions.
Here are five issues shaping the midterms:
– **It’s the economy** – Affordability remains issue number one. Inflation was running at 3.4 percent in August, but the political problem goes beyond the headline rate, with voters paying more for gasoline, housing, electricity, groceries, and borrowing. Pew found 29 percent of voters spontaneously named an economic concern when asked what they most wanted congressional candidates to discuss — more than three times any other category. Another survey, from the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, found 57 percent placing groceries, gas, or utilities among their top three issues. Trump’s tariffs feed directly into the debate, with opponents blaming them for higher costs while the administration argues they protect American industry and raise revenue.
– **Iran war** – A foreign war has become a domestic pocketbook issue. The conflict with Iran, underway since February, has driven energy costs higher and become deeply unpopular. Emerson’s September survey rated the Iran war the single most important issue among those it tested, while Reuters/Ipsos found only 34 percent approving of Trump’s handling of the conflict. Republican candidates in several competitive races have called for the fighting to end, and four Republican senators joined Democrats in a September vote seeking to rein it in.
– **Immigration** – Trump’s signature political strength has become more complicated. The president returned to office promising mass deportations, but controversy over aggressive ICE operations and other enforcement tactics has eroded support. Reuters/Ipsos found 55 percent disapproved of Trump’s handling of immigration. Marist, meanwhile, found Democrats and Republicans essentially level on which party voters trusted more on the issue — a striking change from the clear Republican advantage of 2024. The shift is particularly notable among Latinos. A survey across competitive House districts found 62 percent of Latino voters disapproved of the administration’s deportation and immigration enforcement.
– **Trump, money, and power** – The president himself is an issue — including how he uses the office. Trump has explicitly asked voters to behave as though he were on the ballot, making the election partly a referendum on his second term. Government ethics ranked second behind the economy in Pew’s open-ended survey, cited by nine percent of voters. A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found 97 percent of Americans believed there was at least some corruption in the federal government, while 66 percent said they had little or no trust in Trump to avoid using the presidency to benefit his family’s businesses. Democrats have promised investigations of Trump family business dealings if they win congressional subpoena power, although Republicans dismiss many such allegations as partisan attacks.
– **AI comes to town** – Artificial intelligence has jumped out of the laptop and into the campaign trail. Voters worry about job losses, safety and regulation — but increasingly also about the giant data centers needed to power AI. Almost half of Americans told Pew they were very concerned about AI’s role in the economy, while 50 percent said data centers were mostly bad for household energy costs and 54 percent said they were bad for the environment. AI regulation scored surprisingly highly in Emerson’s September survey, just behind immigration and gas prices. Data centers themselves ranked lower nationally, but have become major campaign issues in states including Ohio as communities battle over electricity, water, and construction. Congress even spent some of its final pre-election days arguing over who should pay the electricity costs created by them — proof that, in 2026, even the server farm has become political.
– **Other fault lines** – Not every familiar American culture-war issue has dominated the 2026 campaign, but several remain potent dividing lines. Transgender rights continue to produce fierce arguments over participation in women’s sports. Health care is also a perennial election concern, encompassing the cost of insurance and medicines, and access to coverage. These issues have not necessarily driven the national midterm campaign as strongly as affordability, Iran, or immigration, but they remain powerful mobilizers for parts of both parties’ coalitions.
– Frankie TAGGART
© 2024 AFP
