With the midterm elections just around the corner, Americans are gearing up to vote on an entirely different set of issues than in the 2024 general election. Rather than weighing the merits of a potential Kamala Harris administration, voters are now assessing the record of a second Trump term, defined by the rise of AI and military operations in Iran.
Around three weeks before the midterms, AP-NORC queried potential voters’ issue saliency. Economic concerns led at 85%, followed closely by cost-of-living concerns at 84%. Then came the Iran War at 64%, which ranked ahead of immigration and crime, the very issues that carried Donald Trump back to the White House in 2024.
Americans are often said not to vote on foreign policy, but survey findings suggest otherwise. Researchers David Karol and Edward Miguel found that Iraq casualties measurably depressed George W. Bush’s vote share in 2004; absent the war, they estimate Bush would have won 52.3% of the national vote and 366 electoral votes. Two years later, Pew called the Iraq War the central issue of the 2006 midterms, and the national exit poll showed voters who disapproved of the war breaking overwhelmingly for Democrats, who took back the House. This cycle, Fox News finds that six in ten voters oppose military action against Iran—and that those voters favor Democratic congressional candidates by 56 points.
Issue saliency changes with events and with what the president does, so the shift itself is no surprise. Nor have Democrats misread it. The war is unpopular, and their polling tells them so.
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