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Inflation, Abortion Top Issues for US Midterm Voters, Exit Poll Finds

Inflation and abortion topped the list of issues motivating U.S. voters in Tuesday’s midterm elections, followed by crime, immigration and gun policy, an exit poll conducted by Edison Research showed.

Turnout for the midterms, which will determine control of Congress and a number of state governorships, was about evenly divided between men and women, according to the poll.

The following is a summary of some of the survey’s latest findings:

About 6 out of 10 voters said they were "dissatisfied or angry" about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade, and about the same percentage said abortion should be legal.
About 3 out of 10 voters said inflation was their top concern in deciding how to vote.
About 3 out of 10 voters said abortion was their top concern in deciding how to vote.
About 1 out of 10 voters said crime was their top concern in deciding how to vote.
About 1 out of 10 voters said immigration was their top concern in deciding how to vote.
About 1 out of 10 voters said gun policy was their top concern in deciding how to vote.
About 8 out of 10 voters said the economy was "not so good or poor" versus about 2 of 10 who said it was "excellent or good."
About 6 out of 10 voters said gasoline prices had caused them a financial hardship recently.
About 6 out of 10 voters said abortion should be legal vs. 4 of 10 who said it should be illegal.
About 5 out of 10 voters said their family's financial situation was worse than it was two years ago, while 3 of 10 said it was unchanged and 2 of 10 said it was better.
About 7 out of 10 voters said U.S. democracy was threatened.
About 7 out of 10 voters said they would not like to see President Joe Biden run for a second term.
About 6 out of 10 voters held an unfavorable opinion of Trump and 4 out 10 held a favorable opinion.
About half of voters approved of Biden's student loan forgiveness plan, roughly the same as those who disapproved.

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In Photos: 2022 US Midterm Elections

Millions of Americans cast their ballots in congressional elections that will determine the philosophical shape of Congress and set the tone for the Washington political debate during the second half of Democratic President Joe Biden’s four-year term.
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Afghan Americans Voting With Eye Toward Afghan Refugee Issues

 Some Afghan Americans who live in northern Virginia are determined to vote in the midterm elections, saying that U.S. foreign policy toward Afghanistan and immigration are most important to them. Matiullah Abid Noor and Shahnaz Nafees have the story. Roshan Noorzai contributed to this report.
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As Midterm Elections Near, Twitter Turmoil Raises Misinformation Concerns

Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter comes as the U.S. holds midterm elections this week, with observers warning that online misinformation about the credibility of the electoral process can have real-world effects. Is Twitter, under Musk, ready? Tina Trinh reports. Michelle Quinn contributed.
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Republicans, Democrats File Over 100 Lawsuits in Run-up to Midterms

In the run-up to Tuesday’s midterms, Republicans and Democrats have filed dozens of lawsuits in battleground states that hold the key to control of the U.S. Congress.

The lawsuits challenge various rules governing the elections, with the bulk focused on the casting and counting of mail-in ballots that have grown in popularity in recent years.

As of Monday, a total of 128 election and voting-related lawsuits have been filed so far in 2022, according to Democracy Docket, a left-leaning voting rights organization that tracks election litigation. Of the total, 71 seek to restrict access to voting, while the rest aim to expand or protect voting, Democracy Docket says.

A September analysis by Democracy Docket showed that Republicans accounted for slightly more than half of the lawsuits filed this year.

Sylvia Albert, Director of Voting and Elections at Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog and advocacy organization, said the extraordinary amount of litigation will likely make this midterm the most litigious election in recent memory, after only the 2020 presidential race.

“It is routine for there to be a small amount of lawsuits filed on both sides to get an edge,” Albert said. “What’s different this time around is the sheer amount of lawsuits, and the obvious attempt to disenfranchise voters and undermine people’s faith in elections.”

In 2020, Democracy Docket tracked 68 lawsuits filed before Election Day.

Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the election law reform initiative at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the Republican lawsuits merely seek compliance with the law.

“My understanding is that the lawsuits that are being filed are simply asking courts to order state officials to comply with state law,” von Spakovsky said.

Democracy Docket says Republicans have filed a record number of election-related lawsuits this year, with the majority seeking to limit mail-in voting.

Voting by mail surged during the 2020 presidential election. But Republican-controlled states have since adopted measures to limit the practice, saying that mail-in voting is susceptible to fraud.

Republicans have had some success challenging voting by mail this year.

In Wisconsin, where Republican Senator Ron Johnson faces a tough challenge from the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor, local courts last week sided with Republicans, ruling that county clerks could not accept mail-in ballots with partial addresses of witnesses.

In Pennsylvania, where a Senate seat vacated by a Republican is up for grabs, the state Supreme Court last week approved a Republican request that election officials not count undated or incorrectly dated mail-in ballots.

But in Michigan, a judge Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought by a Republican candidate who asked the court to require all voters in Detroit to get absentee ballots in person or vote in person.

Albert of Common Cause said the current litigation over the counting of absentee ballots will likely extend into the post-election canvass and certification period, delaying the results of some close races.

“Especially in states where absentee ballots could swing the results,” Albert said. “We continue to reiterate that Election Day is not results day, and we may be waiting quite a while for final counts.”

Post-election court battles will likely involve many aspects of the elections. In addition to the counting and processing of mail-in ballots, Democracy Docket says it expects legal challenges to voters’ eligibility, intimidation of voters and election workers, conspiracy theories about electronic voting machines and counties that refuse to certify their election results.
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US Officials Hope Confidence Campaign Pays Off for Midterm Elections

U.S. voters and election security officials are bracing for potential disruptions, meddling and even violence as millions of Americans head to the polls Tuesday to cast ballots in the country’s midterm elections.

According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll, just over half of Americans (51%) say violence at polling places is somewhat or very likely.

The poll, which surveyed 1,500 adults between October 29 and November 1, found just as many (51%) believe there will be interference by foreign countries.

A separate YouGov poll from July found 32% of those surveyed had little to no confidence in the results of the midterms.

“I would say I have concerns about the system,” an Arizona voter named Fred, who declined to share his last name, told VOA. “Who’s to say that they count all the votes properly?”

Despite such skepticism, the message from U.S. election officials has been consistent.

“Americans should go to the ballot box with confidence,” Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Election Security Agency (CISA), told a cybersecurity forum late last month.

“There’s been an incredible amount of work done across the board to be able to secure our election infrastructure,” she said, sharing a message that has since been echoed by Homeland Security officials and even the White House.

Yet U.S. officials also acknowledge the threats to Tuesday’s elections are serious and are being treated with proper caution.

Violence

The country’s Homeland Security officials began sounding the alarm about potential election-related violence as far back as February, repeating the warning in an updated National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin in June.

“We assess that calls for violence by domestic violent extremists directed at democratic institutions, political candidates, party offices, election events, and election workers will likely increase,” the bulletin said.

More recent intelligence assessments by U.S. officials caution the greatest threat is posed by so-called “lone wolves” – angry or aggrieved individuals who decide to act on their own.

Likely targets range from election-related infrastructure, such as polling places and ballot drop boxes, to election workers, voters and even political candidates and rallies.

Adding to the concern is the growing use of militaristic language and imagery in U.S.-based disinformation campaigns, some of which is being amplified by U.S. adversaries such as Russia.

“The influence attempts … do not directly encourage people to undertake violent actions, but very likely lay the groundwork and allude to some physical action,” Brian Liston, a senior threat intelligence analyst for the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, told VOA by email.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has received more than 1,000 reports of threats against election officials since June 2021, leading to at least six arrests, according to senior officials.

Almost 60% of the reported threats came from seven states – Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin. All either ran audits or saw considerable debate about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

Disinformation

Concerns about disinformation campaigns and influence operations have been increasing steadily in the run-up to the midterm elections.

U.S. officials and researchers believe the majority of disinformation is originating domestically, citing a rise in anti-government and anti-authority sentiment within the U.S.

But they warn there has been a concerted effort by multiple U.S. adversaries to seize on lingering doubts about the election system itself.

Russia, China and Iran “will take advantage of sort of election integrity narratives that come up in the U.S. ecosystem,” a senior FBI official said last month while briefing reporters. “We’ve seen that already, specifically from Russia.”

The cybersecurity firm Recorded Future has further warned that Russia and China resurrected dormant social media accounts to amplify doubt and deepen U.S. political divisions ahead of the midterm elections.

In the case of Russia, several of the resurrected accounts targeted audiences on social media platforms like Gab and Gettr that cater to conservative audiences, Recorded Future said.

Recorded Future said China’s influence operations, such as a campaign that began this past September, span platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Douyin, described as a Chinese-language version of TikTok.

“Many of these [posts and comments] appear to criticize both the Republican and Democrat parties and promote extreme views on both sides,” the Recorded Future report said.

China has consistently denied allegations it has used and is using influence operations to meddle in U.S. elections.

But on Monday, a key confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin contradicted previous denials from the Kremlin, confessing to ongoing election meddling.

“We have interfered, we are interfering, and we will continue to interfere,” Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Russian social media. “Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.”

Additional research has warned of likely disinformation campaigns aimed at discrediting voting system manufacturers. 

CISA, the lead federal agency for election security, has pushed back against disinformation efforts with social media campaigns pointing voters to trusted voices – state and local election officials.

CISA has also updated its rumor control website, set up to debunk election-related disinformation and conspiracy theories.

Cyber threats

Despite concerns that adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran may try to disrupt the election with a combination of cyber hacks and ransomware, U.S. officials have expressed confidence the risks are low.

“There is no information credible or specific about efforts to disrupt or compromise that election infrastructure” CISA Director Jen Easterly said last week.

Other CISA officials have said the agency, along with state and local partners, has continued to build on security measures from the 2020 U.S. elections to better secure election systems, and systems and databases related to elections, such as those that keep track of registered voters.

At the same time, U.S. Cyber Command has been directing its teams to look for potential attacks but has repeatedly said it is not finding new threats.

That aligns with the findings of multiple cybersecurity firms, which have said most of what they have seen, so far, is “pretty basic.”

“There is a continued focus on state election officials. However, it’s kind of a low-tech approach. It’s very much focused on the user itself, phishing and trying to bait them into surrendering their credentials,” Pat Flynn, head of the Advanced Programs Group at Trellix, told VOA.

“I don’t see any indications that any sort of technology is compromised, or we should lose confidence in the election system,” he added.

Still, CISA has warned it is possible hackers may try to go after systems that will make voting more difficult, possibly by trying to take down power stations or by hitting local government websites with ransomware.

But Easterly has cautioned that just because there are problems, it does not mean there is an attack.

“There are going to be errors. There are going to be glitches. It happens in every election,” she said.

“Somebody will forget their key to the polling place. A water pipe will burst … These are normal things. They’re not nefarious.”
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Republicans Show Late Gains as Election Enters Final Days

With just days to go before the 2022 midterm elections, and control of both houses of Congress and many important state-level offices on the line, momentum appears to be swinging in favor of the Republican Party.

For several months in the middle of 2022, Democrats had allowed themselves to hope that this year they might escape the usual fate of the president’s party during midterms — an almost inevitable loss of seats in Congress.

A Supreme Court ruling that did away with a constitutional right to abortion, and a series of high-profile hearings illuminating the role former President Trump played in the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol seemed to invigorate Democratic voters, who showed up in record numbers for a number of state-level elections over the summer.

However, with the nation struggling under levels of inflation not seen in a generation and Democratic President Joe Biden’s approval rating well below 50%, late polling shows Republicans making gains across a variety of races.

Fundamentals ‘assert themselves’

While conceding that 2022 had been a “topsy-turvy year,” Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told VOA the late change “aligns with what usually happens in [the] midterms.”

He said, “Particularly when you’ve got a president with poor numbers, sometimes the fundamentals just assert themselves.”

William A. Galston, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, told VOA that he agrees that Republicans appear to be enjoying a late surge, but said that shouldn’t be seen as a surprise.

“It’s important to understand that there is nothing unusual about this,” he said. “Indeed, it would be unusual if it weren’t happening. What also seems clear is that the themes that Republicans have emphasized increasingly during this campaign have turned out to be the issues that are top of mind for voters.”

Galston added, “By contrast, the Democratic Party’s agenda has appealed more to core Democrats than to anyone else. Core Democrats care a lot about abortion. They care a lot about threats to democracy, as they understand those threats. But the Republican focus on inflation and crime and to a lesser extent immigration, particularly in border states, has proved more effective.”

Limited competition in House races

In the House of Representatives, control goes to the party that holds a majority of the 435 seats. Currently, the Democrats hold 220 seats, only two more than the 218 required for a bare majority.

Because of the already tight margin of control in the House, even a small pickup by Republicans would be enough to give them control of the chamber, a result that most election observers have been confidently predicting for months.

In the elections for the 435 seats that make up the House of Representatives, the vast majority of races are not considered competitive at all. Over the course of many years, through a process known as “gerrymandering,” House districts have been drawn in such a way that most heavily favor members of one party or another.

Bad numbers for Democrats

For example, in its most recent analysis of the races, the Cook Political Report rates a total of 347 House seats as “solid” for one party or the other, with Republicans maintaining an advantage of 188 to 159.

Among the remainder, Cook Political rates 13 as “likely” Democratic wins and 11 as likely Republican wins, while another 16 seats “lean” Democratic and another 13 lean Republican.

Assuming all those races go as expected, that leaves Republicans with 212 seats and Democrats with 188.

This leaves a total of 35 races where the outcome remains in doubt. The GOP would need only win six out of that total to take control, but they are expected to pick up significantly more than that.

Close contest for Senate

The 100 seats in the Senate are currently split evenly between Republicans on one side and Democrats and Independents who caucus with them on the other. The Democrats hold control of the chamber only because Vice President Kamala Harris has the authority to cast tie-breaking votes when the body is deadlocked.

In the Senate, only about one-third of the seats are contested in any given federal election, because Senators serve six-year terms. This year there are 35 seats on the ballot, 14 currently held by Democrats and 21 by Republicans.

The distribution of seats up for election would appear to favor Democrats, who are defending fewer seats, but most analysts believe that the balance of power in the Senate will be decided by just four close races. Three of those involve seats currently held by Democrats, while the fourth is an open seat being vacated by retiring Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey.

Key races

In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who took office in 2021 after winning a special election to fill a seat left vacant by an incumbent’s resignation, is running to win a full term. He is being challenged by Herschel Walker, a former football star and political neophyte. Polling in the final week before the election showed a race with a result too close to call.

Sen. Mark Kelly, a first-term Arizona Democrat, is locked in a battle with Republican Blake Masters, a former venture capitalist. Kelly has led in polling throughout the race, but Masters has steadily eroded the incumbent’s advantage. While Kelly appears to remain ahead, the race is still considered extremely close.

In New Mexico, incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto is being challenged by State Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican. Polling in the race has been relatively sparse, making it difficult to assess any late movement among voters, but Laxalt appears to hold a small lead.

Controversy in Pennsylvania

Possibly the most controversial Senate race in the nation is taking place in Pennsylvania, over Toomey’s empty seat. Lieutenant Gov. John Fetterman is contesting with former television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz. In the early stages of the races, the discussion was dominated by the fact that Oz is a relative newcomer to the state, having lived primarily in neighboring New Jersey until shortly before the election.

However, in May, Fetterman suffered a stroke, leaving him with what the campaign describes as an “auditory processing disorder” that makes it difficult for him to quickly respond to spoken questions. The disorder was evident in a late debate between the two candidates, in which Fetterman plainly struggled to answer some questions.

The Oz campaign and its surrogates have raised questions about Fetterman’s ability to perform the duties of a senator, and in the final weeks of the campaign, polls that had consistently shown Fetterman in the lead have tightened considerably, with some showing Oz in the lead.
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US Candidates Make Final Push Ahead of Midterm Elections

Tuesday’s midterm elections in the United States will determine whether Democrats maintain majorities or if Republicans seize power in the House of Representatives and the Senate, both of which are up for grabs. With some Republican candidates already crying foul on so-called election integrity, nonpartisan groups are keeping a close eye on the process. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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