In Their Own Words: Economy Slides From #1 as Top Issue

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• The war in Iran has temporarily displaced the Economy as the most important issue for voters.
  • When asked to respond in their own words, 29% of voters mention either Foreign Policy (15%) or Iran. (14%)
• As other issues crowd voter concerns, the Economy ranking is down 6 points from last week, to 24%.
  • As other issues crowd voter concerns, the Economy ranking is down 6 points from last week.
  • Politics (12%) and Immigration (10%) are also commonly at the top of voters’ minds.
  • For Republicans, the top three issues identified as most important were Economy (25%), Immigration (17%), and Foreign Policy (15%).
  • For Democrats, the top issues were Economy (21%), Foreign Policy (15%), and Iran (15%).
  • ICE is now the most important issue to only 2% of voters.
• 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 February 25th poll.

“Normally, the Economy is the top issue, and Foreign Policy barely gets mentioned.
Right now, people listing Foreign Policy or Iran [as their top issues] total 29% of all voters — that’s the top issue.”

-Scott Rasmussen, March 6, 2026

This data is from a Napolitan News Service survey of 2,000 Registered Voters conducted online by Scott Rasmussen, March 2-5, 2026. RMG Research, Inc., conducted the field work for the survey. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.1.