As Americans prepare to vote Tuesday, Nov. 3, polls put household costs and health care above artificial intelligence, framing affordability as a leading concern in the contest for control of Congress.
President Donald Trump is not on the ballot. The midterms will determine which party holds majorities in the House and Senate for the next two years; all 435 House seats and roughly one-third of Senate seats are contested.
An AP-NORC survey of 1,119 adults, conducted Oct. 8-12, found 85% named the economy among the most important issues in their vote and 84% named the cost of living. Health care followed at 69%, the Iran war at 64% and artificial intelligence at 35%. The poll’s margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
Trump’s job approval was 32% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Sept. 17-20, which Ipsos described as a low point in its polling across his first and second presidencies. A later AP-NORC survey found 36% approval and 64% disapproval. The polls were conducted at different times by different organizations, so their results are not a single trendline.
Health care costs add a direct household concern. In a September poll of registered voters, KFF found 42% trusted Democrats to handle those costs, compared with 22% who trusted Republicans. Enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits expired at the end of 2025. KFF reported that 22 million of 24 million Marketplace enrollees had received a credit before it expired, and estimated that subsidized enrollees would pay 114% more on average to keep the same plan in 2026.
Polls also show concern about the Iran conflict, though they asked different questions. AP-NORC found 64% included the war among the most important issues for their vote. In Gallup’s Oct. 1-19 survey of registered voters, 47% rated the situation in Iran extremely important to their congressional vote.
Quinnipiac University’s Sept. 24-27 poll of 1,202 adults found 91% considered AI guardrails important and 86% supported independent safety standards even if they slowed development. On local infrastructure, 72% opposed building an AI data center in their community and 21% supported it. Gallup found 30% rated data-center construction extremely important to their congressional vote, a separate measure of election priority.
“AI faces a public acceptance test when it acquires a physical address,” said Tamilla Triantoro, an associate professor of Business Analytics and Information Systems at Quinnipiac University School of Business. In its October outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projected commercial-sector electricity demand, which includes data centers, would rise 2.8% year over year in 2027. The agency linked growth in commercial and industrial electricity use to data-center development and manufacturing activity. EIA’s next Short-Term Energy Outlook is scheduled for Nov. 10.
