The "any port in a storm" midterm is here.

Polls start closing in hours. As results come in, we know Americans feel unsettled on a number of fronts - and may be reaching for candidates who offer a sense of security.

Election day is always quiet for those in my industry. After spending months crunching the numbers, it is the moment of truth. Results will come in shortly. But the day of relative peace gives chance to step back and sort through what this election has been all about.

There are two things I expect to be repeated over and over and over again on television and Twitter tonight, both of which are true but are not the whole picture.

The first is that a "red wave" was to have been expected purely because it is a midterm and the party out of power always benefits. Yes, with the exception of 1998 and 2002, this has been true through my lifetime. Republicans felt great heading into this midterm for a wide range of structural reasons, such as redistricting (which wound up not conferring upon them as much of an advantage as they'd hoped) and Americans' tendency to see the grass as greener on the other side of the fence. President Biden's job approval is low, belief that our nation is on the wrong track is high, and voters don't usually show up to say "thank you" - giving the party out of power an extra boost in relative motivation to vote.

The second is that this was an election about inflation. Add a poor economic outlook to the above fundamentals and you get a recipe for disaster for the party in power. The fact that cost of living has been soaring, that gas prices are still through the roof, that the rent is too damn high, all of this plays a huge role. I expect Republicans to have an extraordinary night at the ballot box not just because they're the party out of power, but because rising prices have been a powerful accelerant, reminding voters each and every day that things are not going great under the current government.

You could take those two points and repeat them all night and probably be close to the mark.

But what about Dobbs and abortion? The border? Crime? Donald Trump? January 6th? Parental rights? COVID policy? Ukraine? "Candidate quality", the euphemism for the unusual characters who found themselves emerging from primaries? If we step back and assume that each of these perhaps had some role at the margins on the outcomes we will see tonight, how can we pull it all together?

I think you can boil all of these down into three categories of instability and anxiety voters are feeling.

The first is economic insecurity. Inflation, yes, gas prices, yes, but also the stock market (the S&P 500 is down 20% year-to-date). Also the ability to buy a home (a 30-year fixed rate mortgage was about 2.8% the day Joe Biden was inaugurated; it is about 7% today). And it isn't just that things are bad now, it is that polls consistently show large numbers of voters think things will get worse. They think recession is on the horizon, our supply chains are too unreliable, retirement is not necessarily within reach, you name it. Americans vote with their pocketbooks frequently, but the anxiety around the economy runs deeper than being agitated that chicken thighs cost more at Publix.

The second is physical insecurity. Crime falls into this basket, and Republicans are trusted more on this issue by double digits. So too immigration, with voters even outside the Republican base looking at the situation on the border and deciding something needs to change. Most Americans personally feel that the issue of crime is a problem for them, numbers that have ticked upwards lately. But it isn't just worry about being mugged in the parking lot. From worries about school shootings and gun violence all the way to concern that Vladimir Putin might go nuclear, Americans feel unsafe on a whole host of fronts.

The final is institutional insecurity. This is where "threats to democracy" crops up in the polling. If you're more progressive, this is worries about election results being ignored, about voter suppression, about January 6th, about the Supreme Court and Dobbs, about a host of civil rights issues. If you're more conservative, this might express itself as worry about voter fraud, concern that power has become concentrated in the hands of large corporations that don't share your values, fears that rapidly changing norms around gender, race, and sexuality might make their way into your child's school. But even voters who are moderate can find plenty to worry about here; if there's anything Americans are unified about, it is the fact that we are divided.

In focus groups, if you ask voters to describe things in America today, they will sometimes invoke weather metaphors. And the forecast right now? Storms ahead. If you feel everything is on the edge, that things are unraveling, that we are sliding ever more toward disaster, what then? Who is offering security in uncertain times?

The latest Wall Street Journal poll gives us clues. Some seven in ten Americans say that things in our country are headed off on the wrong track. And the ways in which we are off on "the wrong track" are not all ways in which Republicans are trusted by default. On crime, Republicans lead; on gun violence, Democrats do. On abortion and drug prices, Democrats lead; on inflation and foreign policy, Republicans do. The brand of the Republican Party is far from great; only 44 percent of adults told Gallup they think positively about the G.O.P. in September. But for Democrats, the number is even worse, at 39 percent.

The earliest exit polls have just come out - and yes, they are still going to be adjusted throughout the night, treat them with extreme caution - and they show only one quarter of voters saying they are satisfied with the way things are going these days.

With so many Americans feeling that there are storms on the horizon, they may be looking for a safe harbor.

(Correction: the initial version of this post said a bad economy was bad for the party "out of power". This is obviously wrong and was a typo on my part. It has been fixed to say "party in power", but noting the edit for transparency.)