Midterms: which issue matters most to voters? — Nov 3, 2026

The issue voters rank most important is the strike with the highest value, where a strike's value is the sum of the percentages of all voters for every answer choice that maps to it on the national U.S. House exit poll's most-important-issue question as displayed by the source, whatever its exact title. If more than one such question is displayed, the one asking which issue mattered most to the respondent's vote governs. An answer choice maps to a strike only if its wording contains, as a whole word or phrase and ignoring capitalization and singular or plural form, one of the terms listed for that strike: economy, economic, inflation, price, cost, cost of living, affordability, affordable, job, tax, tariff or trade (Economy and cost of living); Iran, war, foreign policy, national security or terrorism (Iran war and foreign policy); immigration, border or deportation (Immigration); democracy (Democracy); health care or healthcare (Health care); abortion (Abortion); and crime or public safety (Crime). An answer choice containing terms listed for more than one strike maps only to the strike whose term appears first in it. Any other answer choice, including gun policy, maps to no strike and is compared on its own percentage. If such an answer choice has a higher percentage than every strike's value, every market resolves No. If the highest value or percentage is tied, N is the number of tied strikes plus any tied answer choice that maps to no strike; each tied strike will receive 1/N of the Settlement Value. For example, if "Inflation" receives 25%, "Tariffs" receives 10% and "Democracy" receives 30%, Economy and cost of living has a value of 35% and resolves Yes, and Democracy resolves No. The primary resolution source is the CNN figure displayed at exactly 12:00 PM ET on November 6, 2026. If unavailable, CNN remains the primary source for 24 hours after that time. If it remains unavailable, use CBS News followed by ABC News through 11:59 PM ET on November 7, 2026.