WASHINGTON (AP) — High inflation and fears about democracy’s health weighed heavily on U.S. voters in a midterm election in which once — and perhaps future — rivals for the White House, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, cast a shadow, AP VoteCast shows.

The survey depicts a country in distress at a moment when control of Congress — and a choice between sharply contrasting visions of America — hang in the balance. Much of the country is mired in pessimism about America’s future and its political leadership, with lingering tensions in how people feel about the current president and his predecessor shaping choices at the ballot box.

The detailed portrait of the American electorate is based on preliminary results from VoteCast, an extensive survey of more than 90,000 voters nationwide conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.

About half of voters say inflation factored significantly in their vote, as groceries, gasoline, housing, food and other costs have shot up in the past year, giving Republicans a vehicle for criticizing Biden. The economy was an overarching concern with voters, about 8 in 10 of whom said it was in bad shape as inflation, near a 40-year high, has raised fears of a recession. Voters are split as to whether Biden’s policies caused higher prices, or factors beyond his control, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Slightly fewer voters — 44% — say the future of democracy was their primary consideration. On the campaign trail, Biden has warned that Republicans are posing a threat to democracy. Many GOP leaders continue to cast doubt on the U.S. electoral system, falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost, was rigged.

Yet the “Make America Great Again,” or MAGA, movement sparked by Trump appears to have tightened its grip on Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of GOP voters say they support the MAGA movement, a sign of the potential gridlock with Biden’s White House should Republicans win majorities in the House or Senate.

Republicans are counting on voter dissatisfaction with inflation, crime and immigration to help them take control of both chambers of Congress. Biden and his fellow Democrats have argued that the U.S. middle class is poised for a renaissance because of their investments on infrastructure, computer chip production and clean energy projects.

Voters for both parties consider inflation and the fate of democracy to be important. But Republicans were more likely to rank the economy as the top factor in their vote, while Democrats were more likely to prioritize the future of democracy.

Voters have become increasingly demoralized as the country’s political divisions have hardened. Roughly three-quarters say the country is headed in the wrong direction. That figure is higher than it was in the VoteCast survey of voters in 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Two years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic was considered the country’s top issue; now just 2% of voters name it the top priority as other issues have taken center stage.

Biden’s election was in part because of views that the pandemic was out of control under Trump’s leadership, VoteCast showed. A majority of voters said they thought he “cares about people like them.” A smaller percentage of 2022 voters say that.

Even Democrats harbor doubts about Biden, who has said he plans to seek reelection in 2024. Nearly a third of voters for Democratic congressional candidates say Biden is not a strong leader. One in five Democrats says he lacks the mental capability to serve effectively as president. And about 3 in 10 disapprove of his economic leadership.

The 2020 presidential election still hangs over these congressional, state and local races. Almost two-thirds of Democratic voters said they cast ballots to show opposition to Trump, while about 7 in 10 Republican voters said their votes were about defying Biden.

Inflation has been a clear blow to the well-being of many Americans. A third of voters describe their families as falling behind financially. That’s nearly double the percentage of the electorate that said the same two years ago.

About half of voters in the suburbs backed Democrats nationally, slightly less than in 2020 and 2018. Democrats still fare better with women, while men are more likely to prefer Republicans. Voters under 45 tend to favor Democrats; older voters generally lean Republican.

Facing headwinds on the economy, Biden and many Democratic candidates sought to tap their base’s outrage after the Supreme Court overturned the abortion protections in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision enshrining the right to abortion. Overall, 7 in 10 voters say the ruling was an important factor in their midterm decisions.

VoteCast also shows the reversal was broadly unpopular. About 6 in 10 say they are angry or dissatisfied by it, while about 4 in 10 were pleased. And roughly 6 in 10 say they favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

Crime also was an important factor for most voters, and half say the Biden administration has made the U.S. less safe from crime.

Despite concerns about democracy, about 4 in 10 voters say they are “very” confident that votes in the midterm elections will be counted accurately, an improvement from the percentage of the 2020 electorate that said so.

Many voters came into the election with entrenched views. About half say they knew all along how they would vote, while a third decided over the course of the campaign, and roughly 1 in 10 say they made their choice in the last few days.

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AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News and The Associated Press. The survey of 93,406 voters was conducted for nine days, concluding as polls closed. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters drawn from state voter files; self-identified registered voters using NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population; and self-identified registered voters selected from nonprobability online panels. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated to be plus or minus 0.5 percentage points. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://ap.org/votecast.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sought Wednesday to strike a delicate balance at a moment when high inflation is bedeviling the nation’s economy and commanding a central role in the midterm elections.

Powell suggested that the Fed may decide in coming months to slow its aggressive interest rate increases. Yet he also made clear that the Fed isn’t even close to declaring victory in its fight to curb an inflation rate that is near four-decade highs and has shown few signs of ebbing.

When the Fed ended its latest policy meeting Wednesday, it announced that it was pumping up its benchmark rate by a substantial three-quarters of a point for a fourth straight time. Its key rate now stands in a range of 3.75% to 4%, the highest in 15 years.

It was the central bank’s sixth rate hike this year — a streak that has made mortgages and other consumer and business loans increasingly expensive and heightened the risk of a recession.

The statement the Fed issued suggested that it would begin to take a more deliberate approach to rate hikes, likely leading to smaller increases in borrowing costs. In doing so, it would consider that rate hikes take time to feed into the economy and achieve their goal of slowing inflation.

The financial markets initially cheered the notion that the Fed might soon decide to slow its hikes, with stock and bond prices surging higher.

Yet as his news conference got under way, Powell struck a harder line. He stressed that the Fed’s policymakers have seen little progress in their efforts to control inflation and would likely have to send rates even higher than they thought they would at their last meeting in September.

“We still have some ways to go,” he said. “Incoming data since our last meeting suggests” that the officials might have to raise rates higher than the 4.6% they forecast in September.

The Fed chair pointedly emphasized that it would be “very premature” to even think about halting the rate hikes. Inflation pressures, he said, remain far too high.

The abrupt shift in tone gave the financial markets whiplash. Stocks sharply reversed their gains and tumbled into the close of trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day down over 500 points, or about 1.5%.

“I think he accomplished his goal” of striking hawkish and dovish notes, said Vince Reinhart, chief economist at Dreyfus and Mellon. (“Hawks” generally prefer higher rates to fight inflation, while “doves” often lean more toward lower rates to support hiring.) “That’s why the market was so confused.”

The Fed’s meeting occurred as financial markets and many economists have grown nervous that Powell will end up leading the central bank to raise borrowing costs higher than needed to tame inflation and will cause a painful recession in the process.

Powell implicitly addressed those fears at his news conference. He kept the door open to downshifting to a half-point hike when the Fed next meets in December. The central bank could then step down even further to a quarter-point increase — a more typically sized rate hike — early next year.

“At some point,” he said, “it will become appropriate to slow the pace of increases. So that time is coming, and it may come as soon as the next meeting or the one after that. No decision has been made.”

At the same time, Powell noted that the job market remains strong, which means many businesses must raise pay to keep workers — raises that are often passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

This week, the government reported that companies posted more job openings in September than in August. There are now 1.9 available jobs for each unemployed worker, an unusually large supply, which also fuels bigger pay increases and adds to inflationary pressures.

Overall, Powell said the Fed has made little progress against inflation so far.

“We think we have a ways to go, we have some ground to cover with interest rates,” he continued, “before we get to that level of interest rates that we think is sufficiently restrictive.”

The persistence of inflated prices and higher borrowing costs is pressuring American households and has undercut the ability of Democrats to campaign on the health of the job market as they try to keep control of Congress. Republican candidates have hammered Democrats on the punishing impact of inflation in the run-up to the midterm elections that will end Tuesday.

“Chair Powell stuck to this two-pronged message: We’re not done yet, due to high inflation and a strong commitment to bring it down,” Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets Economics, wrote in a note. “But we may not need to keep cranking rates aggressively, due to an economy that has slowed significantly from last year and long-term inflation expectations that are still ‘well anchored.’ ”

Typically, the Fed raises rates in quarter-point increments. But after having miscalculated in downplaying inflation last year as likely transitory, Powell has led the Fed to raise rates aggressively to try to slow borrowing and spending and ease price pressures.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage, just 3.14% a year ago, surpassed 7% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported. Sales of existing homes have dropped for eight straight months.

Still, the policymakers may feel they can soon slow the pace of their rate hikes because some early signs suggest that inflation could start declining in 2023. Consumer spending, squeezed by high prices and costlier loans, is barely growing. Supply chain snarls are easing, which means fewer shortages of goods and parts. Wage growth is plateauing, which, if followed by declines, would reduce inflationary pressures.

Outside the United States, many other major central banks are also rapidly raising rates to try to cool inflation levels that are even higher than in the U.S.

Last week, the European Central Bank announced its second consecutive jumbo rate hike, increasing rates at the fastest pace in the euro currency’s history to try to curb inflation that soared to a record 10.7% last month.

Likewise, the Bank of England is expected to raise rates Thursday to try to ease consumer prices, which have risen at their fastest pace in 40 years, to 10.1% in September. Even as they raise rates to combat inflation, both Europe and the U.K. appear to be sliding toward recession.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Focused on relentlessly rising prices, President Joe Biden plotted inflation-fighting strategy Tuesday with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, with the fate of the economy and his own political prospects increasingly dependent on the actions of the government’s central bank.

Biden hoped to demonstrate to voters that he was attuned to their worries about higher gasoline, grocery and other prices whiles still insisting an independent Fed will act free from political pressure.

Like Biden, the Fed wants to slow inflation without knocking the U.S. economy into recession, a highly sensitive mission that is to include increasing benchmark interest rates this summer. The president said he would not attempt to direct that course as some previous presidents have tried.

“My plan to address inflation starts with simple proposition: Respect the Fed, respect the Fed’s independence,” Biden said.

The sit-down on a heat-drenched late-spring day was Biden’s latest effort to show his dedication to containing the 8.3% leap in consumer prices over the past year. Rising gas and food costs have angered many Americans heading into the midterm elections, putting Democrats’ control of the House and Senate at risk.

Biden is running out of options on his own. His past attempts — oil releases from the strategic reserve, improving port operations and calls to investigate price gouging — have fallen short of satisfactory results. High prices have undermined his efforts to highlight the low 3.6% unemployment rate, leaving a growing sense of pessimism among Americans.

Tuesday’s meeting was the first since Powell was renominated in November by Biden to lead the central bank and came two weeks after his confirmation for a second term by the Senate.

It also represented something of a reversal by Biden as inflation weighs heavily on voters’ minds. The president asserted in April 2021 that he was “very fastidious about not talking” with the independent Fed and wanted to avoid being seen as “telling them what they should and shouldn’t do.”

The White House, along with the Fed, initially portrayed the inflation surge as a temporary side effect caused by supply chain issues as the U.S. emerged from the pandemic. Republican lawmakers were fast to criticize Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package from last year as pumping too much money into the economy and causing more inflation. That narrative also has held some sway with leading economists who say the financial support was excessive even though it helped the job market roar back.

The administration has walked back its previous statements. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNN on Tuesday evening that she did not fully understand the impact that unanticipated large shocks and supply bottlenecks would have on the economy. “Look, I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take,” she said. “But we recognize that now the Federal Reserve is taking the steps that it needs to take. It’s up to them to decide what to do.”

Inflation has shown signs of moderating but is likely to remain far above the Fed’s 2% target through the end of this year. Gas prices are expected to keep rising, particularly now that the European Union has agreed to cut off 90% of its oil purchases from Russia. That will force the EU to buy more oil from elsewhere, and it drove oil prices to $115 a barrel Tuesday.

This was only the fourth meeting between the president and the Federal Reserve chair, though Powell breakfasts as often as once a week with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who also attended Tuesday’s meeting along with Brian Deese, the White House National Economic Council director.

Ahead of the meeting, Biden suggested that he and Powell were aligned on addressing inflation.

“My predecessor demeaned the Fed, and past presidents have sought to influence its decisions inappropriately during periods of elevated inflation,” Biden said in an op-ed posted Monday by The Wall Street Journal.. “I won’t do this. I have appointed highly qualified people from both parties to lead that institution. I agree with their assessment that fighting inflation is our top economic challenge right now.”

In contrast, President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked Powell after the Fed chair oversaw moderate interest rate hikes in 2018 and continued his public criticism even as Powell cut rates in 2019.

Biden’s endorsement of the Fed’s policies — a stance echoed by congressional GOP leaders — gives Powell important political cover for a series of sharp interest rate hikes intended to rein in higher prices. Yet the higher rates could cause layoffs, raise the unemployment rate and even tip the economy into recession.

Amid worries that the U.S. economy may repeat the high, persistent inflation of the 1970s, the cooperation between Biden and Powell represents a crucial difference from that time and could make it easier for the Fed to restrain higher prices. In the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon pressured Fed chair Arthur Burns to lower interest rates to spur the economy before Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign. Nixon’s interference is now widely seen as a key contributor to runaway inflation, which remained high until the early 1980s.

“That’s why comparisons to the 1970s are wrong,” said Sebastian Mallaby, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a biography on former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, “The Man Who Knew.” “The president’s essay was striking because he explicitly backed the Fed.”

Biden faces an increasingly global challenge as energy and food costs have jumped after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February. Simultaneously, China imposed lockdowns tied to coronavirus outbreaks that further strained supply chains. This has left the European Union nursing record inflation and the risks of a recession, while U.S. consumers are increasingly disgruntled by gas prices averaging a nominal record of $4.62 a gallon.

Powell has pledged to keep ratcheting up the Fed’s key short-term interest rate to cool the economy until inflation is “coming down in a clear and convincing way.” But those rate hikes have spurred fears that the Fed, in its drive to slow borrowing and spending, may push the economy into recession. That concern has caused sharp drops in stock prices in the past two months, though markets rallied last week.

Biden, in his op-ed, indicated that the record-setting pace of job creation in the aftermath of the pandemic would slow dramatically, suggesting more moderate levels of 150,000 jobs per month from 500,000. That, he said, would be no warning of weakness but “a sign that we are successfully moving into the next phase of recovery—as this kind of job growth is consistent with a low unemployment rate and a healthy economy.”

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