Inflation Remains Voters’ Top Concern. Can Republicans Keep Their Focus?

Democrats and Republicans are running parallel campaigns, with one party emphasizing abortion and democracy, the other inflation and the economy — and both talking past each other.

Zach Nunn, an Iowa Republican challenging one of the House’s most vulnerable Democrats, had been talking for months about rising prices when a Texas congressman two weeks ago invited him to visit the Mexican border — to see the fentanyl confiscated, hear tales of dying migrants and witness overwhelmed border agents.

Mr. Nunn took it all in, he said. Then, he went back to a district that stretches from Des Moines to the Missouri line to talk about inflation some more.

“You know, from knocking on 10,000 doors, what people are interested in,” Mr. Nunn said. It would not matter, he said, if he were speaking in Clarinda, Iowa — a city of 5,300 — or West Des Moines, a city of 70,000. “People are all talking about what is going on with the economy,” he said.

In the six-month primary season that came to a close on Tuesday, issues like abortion, crime, immigration, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and Donald J. Trump have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds. On Wednesday, polls out of Wisconsin and Georgia again found inflation to be the issue of greatest concern.