With one day until Election Day, voters’ focus has shifted to hot-button issues like abortion and immigration; However, inflation remains the most important issue when it comes to presidential elections.

That’s the findings of University of South Florida researchers’ fourth and final poll in the 2024 election series.

They surveyed 1,500 registered voters nationwide via an online web panel from October 22 to 27 to track how social media use affects political polarization, politics-related stress levels, and belief in election misinformation.

“This will be the third election cycle with misinformation and its dissemination through social media,” said graduate student and research assistant Megan Corn. USF School of Public Affairs.

“A lot of people are now turning to social media for news and information, and I think because it’s so easy for misinformation to spread on those types of platforms, voters are accepting of that and it’s becoming more real for them.”

In addition to seeing which false claims voters believed, the researchers asked what the most important considerations were when deciding who to vote for.

What do voters care about in this election?

More than a quarter (28%) of respondents identified abortion as one of the top three issues affecting how they vote; This rate increased by 7%. August survey results.

“There has been a small but notable increase in voters’ focus on abortion and social policy issues over the past three months,” the report said.

Meanwhile, 37% identified immigration as one of their top three issues, down from a high of 51% in August.

Pocketbook issues remain a primary focus of voters surveyed; Inflation, economy and employment have consistently been ranked 1-2 as the most important issues since January.

University of South Florida

/

Kindness

The majority of respondents (63.3%) describe the overall health of the U.S. economy as “weak,” while a majority of Republicans describe it as “very weak.”

Misinformation about the election

Survey respondents were also asked to indicate whether they believed eight statements about current political events to be true or false. Five were based on misinformation.

One piece of misinformation addressed allegations that Haitian immigrants now living in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating household pets. expression strengthened by Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance.

Among the eight statements, this was the one that the survey respondents identified as false the most (74.4%).

Of the three true statements, respondents were most divided when it came to the question of whether they believed cases of voter fraud in U.S. Presidential elections were rare. 55.2% voted “definitely true” or “probably true,” while 44.8% chose “probably false” or “definitely false.”

Survey quotes The work of the Brennan Center for Justice and a Press release The 2020 US presidential election was “the most secure election in American history” and there is no evidence that votes were deleted, altered or compromised, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a statement.

Voters are under chronic stress

The survey also found that voter attitudes are little affected immediately after major political events; This has led researchers to believe that we are in a period of what they call “chronic stress.”

The two event researchers used as pointers among the surveys in May ranked first. assassination attempt To Donald Trump and Joe Biden on July 13 dropping out of school presidential race in eight days.

None of these events caused a significant change, positive or negative, in the stress levels of the survey participants.

University of South Florida

/

Kindness

“It was around the 3rd survey (in August) when I realized maybe we were just behind,” said Savannah Havird, a graduate student and research assistant at the USF School of Public Affairs. “Maybe we’ve gotten so used to election-related stress that we’re constantly at that level.”

The survey was sponsored by CyberFlorida and was conducted with a 95% confidence level and a margin of error of +/- 2.53.

For more detailed research findings Click here.