When asked to respond in their own words, 41% of voters list the economy as the single most important issue right now. That breaks a streak of 4 straight weeks that 43% have placed that concern at the top. Forty-three percent (43%) remains the yearly high.
In a distant second, for the third week in a row, 11% list politics in general, down 2 points from last week. Another 5% list Donald Trump specifically.
In third comes place comes Social concerns at 8%, though Immigration (7%) and Healthcare (7%) are just behind. The combination of Iran (2%) and Foreign Policy (4%) was the top concern for 6% of voters, a new low*.
Partisan Differences
As usual, the economy is the top concern for Republicans and Democrats. Forty-four percent (44%) of Republicans list it first, along with 38% of Democrats.
Perhaps due to the approach of midterms, the number 2 issue for both parties is the same as well: 11% of Republicans and 12% of Democrats list Politics in general as their most important issue.
For Republicans, number 3 is Social issues (8%). Meanwhile, 9% of Democrats list Healthcare as the top priority, giving it the third slot.
It is worth noting that just behind Social issues, 7% of Republicans actually list Donald Trump as the top concern of today. That's actually more than the 5% of Democrats who say the same.
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 Gemeni, Google's most advanced AI, so that voters can answer the question in their own words.
Consistently, whether given a list or in open-ended responses, economic issues are the top concerns.
Our most recent list-format results are included in our September 28-29 poll. In those results, the economy, inflation, and health care continue to be voters' primary concerns, and have since May.
*When tracking open-ended responses throughout the war in Iran, we have grouped foreign policy, Iran, and war (not mentioned this week) into a single category.
This data is from a Napolitan News Service survey of 1,000 Registered Voters conducted online by Scott Rasmussen, October 19-20, 2026. RMG Research, Inc., conducted the field work for the survey. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.1.
