When asked to respond in their own words, 34% of voters list the economy as the most important issue right now. In a distant 2nd, at 16%, comes the combination of Iran (7%), foreign policy (7%), and war (2%)*.
Those two totals are identical to last week, and the third place issue is also the same: politics (11%).
Partisan Differences
The economy is the top concern for Republicans (37%) and Democrats (32%). After that, there are slight differences.
Republicans: The war in Iran (17%), and immigration (14%) are their other top concerns.
Democrats: Politics (14%) and the war in Iran (13%) rank 2nd and 3rd for Democrats.
Behind the Data
There are many ways to ask about the importance of issues. Napolitan News routinely asks an open-ended question that is categorized and summarized by using Jigsaw's open-source Sensemaker tool, which is built on top of Gemini, Google's most advanced AI, so that voters can answer the question in their own words.
Consistently, whether given a list of issues or in the open-ended responses, economic issues are the top concerns.
Our most recent list-format results are from our June 22-23 poll.
*When tracking open-ended responses throughout the war in Iran, we have grouped foreign policy, war, and Iran into a single category.
This data is from a Napolitan News Service survey of 1,000 Registered Voters conducted online by Scott Rasmussen, August 17-18, 2026. RMG Research, Inc., conducted the field work for the survey. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.1.
