It was widely believed that inflation above all else would doom congressional Democrats to this much dreaded historic red wave but that wave of course failed to materialize. While I don't think people aren't worried about inflation it does strongly suggest that other things mattered more and there's been a lot of attention rightly paid to the right wings culture war extremism. Other forces economic forces perhaps also at work like the fact that unemployment had not shot through the roof the way that it did after the 2008 crash.