Alabama voters say nation headed in right direction

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Alabama vote

A majority of voters casting midterm election ballots in Alabama said the country is headed in the right direction, according to a wide-ranging survey of the American electorate.

As voters cast ballots for governor and members of Congress in Tuesday’s elections, AP VoteCast found that 59 percent of Alabama voters said the country is on the right track, compared with 41 percent who said the country is headed in the wrong direction.

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Voters under 45 were split between Republican Kay Ivey and Democrat Walt Maddox in the race for governor. Voters ages 45 and older were more likely to favor Ivey.

Voters without a college degree modestly supported Ivey. Similarly, college graduates preferred Ivey.

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TOP ISSUE: IMMIGRATION

Immigration was at the forefront of voters’ minds: 32 percent named it as the most important issue facing the nation in this year’s midterm elections. Others considered the economy (19 percent), health care (19 percent), terrorism (11 percent) and gun policy (8 percent) to be the top issue.

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STATE OF THE ECONOMY

Voters have a positive view of the nation’s current economic outlook _ 63 percent said the nation’s economy is good, compared with 37 percent who said it’s not good.

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TRUMP FACTOR

For 42 percent of Alabama voters, President Donald Trump was not a factor they considered while casting their votes. By comparison, 38 percent said a reason for their vote was to express support for Trump, and 19 percent said they voted to express opposition to Trump.

A majority of voters in Alabama had positive views of Trump: 64 percent said they approve of how he is handling his job as president, while 36 percent said they disapprove of Trump.

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AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate in all 50 states conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for The Associated Press and Fox News. The survey of 774 voters and 235 nonvoters in Alabama was conducted Oct. 29 to Nov. 6, concluding as polls close on Election Day. Interviews in English and Spanish with self-identified registered voters selected from opt-in online panels are calibrated with interviews of randomly sampled registered voters nationwide. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated to be plus or minus 10.1 percentage points. Although there is no statistically agreed upon approach for calculating margins of error for non-probability samples, the margin of error is estimated using a calculation called the root mean squared error and other statistical adjustments. All surveys are subject to multiple sources of error, including from sampling, question wording and order, and nonresponse. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at http://www.ap.org/votecast.

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AP created this story automatically using data from NORC.

Republished with permission from the Associated Press.