What are the top issues for Virginians—and voters in general—this election cycle? According to Derrick Anderson, the Republican nominee for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, it’s reducing the cost of living and securing the border.

“Whether it be energy, whether it be the cost of goods, those are the things that are truly impacting us, and I can’t emphasize that enough,” said Anderson at a recent campaign stop in Fredericksburg. “Business owners there are hanging by a thread, and they are in a position where they want to keep their businesses open, but they’re in a tough spot. They’re in a position where they either have to eat the cost, or they have to put the cost on people here in the district.”

His argument makes sense, but do voters believe that Republican leaders are more likely than Democrats to put the economy back on track? According to national polling data, the answer is yes—and resoundingly so. 

The recent CBS News poll asked respondents what they believed would happen to the price of food and groceries if either Harris or Trump were elected. White working-class voters believe by 43 points that prices would rise under Harris, while they think prices would fall under Trump by 26 points. While white college graduates are 11 points less negative on Harris and 21 points less positive on Trump, the overall sentiment still indicates a stronger trust in Trump to manage economic issues more effectively. 

The Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll further reinforces this divide: working-class respondents trust Trump over Harris by 15 points to handle economic issues, whereas college-educated voters slightly favor Harris, though only by a 3-point margin. This latter statistic is particularly telling, because the same poll revealed that while college-educated voters favor Harris by 20 points, that same voting bloc is far less confident in Democrats’ capabilities to actually improve the economy.

“I will focus on reducing the cost of living, so that our families are not deciding between which necessities they purchase at the grocery store or the gas pump,” Anderson told the Fredericksburg Free Press. “And I’ll do this by reducing waste, fraud, and abuse, and over [regulations] that add to rising costs across all aspects of life.”

The Trump-endorsed candidate is also steadfast in his commitment to tightening border security. Conversely, the issue of border security and mass illegal immigration is absent from the main narrative topics of Anderson’s Democrat opponent, Yevgeny Semyon “Eugene” Vindman. 

Given that voters nationwide overwhelmingly perceive Trump and Trump-endorsed candidates as being the better choice with regard to the migrant crisis and national security, Vindman  is following Democrat-based talking points. In the WaPo polls, working-class adults chose Donald Trump over Kamala Harris to handle border issues by a significant margin of 16 points (27 points according to the Fox News polls). Working-class voters overwhelmingly believe that crossings would increase under Harris by a margin of 45 points, whereas they are confident that crossings would decrease under Trump by 75 points. 

The same polling data also shows that, contrary to media narratives, Hispanic voters demonstrate a 3-point preference for Trump. The Fox News poll showed even greater trust in Trump over Harris from Hispanics—a remarkable 17 points.

In interviews, Anderson is quick to mention the issues of illegal immigration, noting that an average of nearly five fentanyl deaths occur in the district each day due to drug trafficking from Mexico. 

As for Vindman, the current state of the border crisis is not a main talking point for his fight for a congressional seat. In a September 23, 2023 tweet, Vindman responded to a video of then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell describing “Border Patrol and ICE agents working to track down lethal fentanyl [and] contain our borders” with the following: “To be clear, I disagree with some of the details of his remarks. Open borders / democrats inflation.” 

Those two issues—open borders and inflation—are, as evidenced by the aforementioned polling data, top issues for Americans this election cycle. 

And in both domains, Republicans lead by wide margins.