Americans Say Inflation and Political Polarization Drove Their 2022 Vote

The 2022 midterm elections saw Republicans take control of the House of Representatives, while Democrats avoided major losses and even gained a seat in the Senate.

FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos conducted a survey of 2,000 Americans to look at what issues drove the vote, as well as public opinion after the election.

Over the past seven months, we’ve learned that rising costs and major events — such as the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade — heavily weighed on the minds of Americans ahead of the November elections. https://t.co/wxwccMzN1D

— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) December 12, 2022

Voters indicated inflation and increasing costs was the most important issue (62%) facing the country, followed by political extremism/polarization (33%) and crime/gun violence (28%).

After casting their ballots, voters said inflation/increasing costs (29%) and political extremism/polarization (19%) were the biggest influences on their vote, followed by abortion (12%).

The public was marginally optimistic about the state of democracy after the election, with 43% saying they were “very” or “somewhat” optimistic.

Reducing inflation was the only topic with broad bipartisan agreement, while other issues revealed partisan divides.