In Their Own Words: Economy Just Barely the Most Important Issue for Voters, Immigration Making Gains

• When asked to respond in their own words, 23% of voters say the Economy is the most important issue right now.
  • Among 2,000 registered voters, Immigration (20%) and Politics (12%) also ranked highly.
  • Social Issues (9%), ICE (8%), and Donald Trump (7%) are also commonly at the top of voters’ minds.
  • For Republicans, the top 3 issues identified as most important were Immigration (30%), Economy (26%), and Politics (10%).
  • For Democrats, the top issues were Economy (19%), Politics (15%), and Immigration (12%), with ICE close behind at 11%.
• 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 Gemini, Google’s most advanced AI) so that voters can answer the question in their own words.
  • Consistently, in both the list and open-ended formats, Economic issues are the top issues.
  • Our most recent list format results are from our December 4th poll.

This data is from a Napolitan News Service survey of 2,000 Registered Voters conducted online by Scott Rasmussen, February 9-12, 2026. RMG Research, Inc., conducted the field work for the survey. It has a margin of error of +/- 2.2.