The next morning, Friday, the government will report another strong month of job growth and another drop in the unemployment rate, to 5.8 percent. Patrick is convinced that the economy is much worse than those official numbers let on – that unemployment is still in double digits. He is 38 and has two kids and does not want his last name printed, because he works in a public-facing job, and he is about to vent, strongly and honestly, about the president of the United States.

“Everyone around me is hurting,” he says. “We are trying our best to deal with the situation, but reality hurts. The rich are doing really well. I don’t complain too much about that, but …” He trails off. He picks back up: “All I know,” he says, “is that, when I look around and when I go to diners, or when I talk to people when I go out to breakfast, everyone feels the same way. We don’t have a shot.”

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Patrick voted for a Republican for Congress on Tuesday, and for a Democrat, Cory Booker, for Senate. He voted for President Obama in 2008 and, after Obama disappointed him, for Mitt Romney in 2012. He believes climate change is real but maybe overblown, that illegal immigrants need a chance but maybe not automatic citizenship. He favors gun rights and also gay marriage. He believes Wall Street and the economic system are tilted against families like his.

A lot of voters took similar concerns to the ballot box this week, and voted similarly to Patrick, a Washington Post analysis of exit poll data shows. About one in 10 voters Tuesday fit the following profile: They believe the economy tilts toward the rich and that climate change is a problem – two solidly Democratic talking points – but they voted for Republicans for the House.

To some analysts, that looks like a contradiction: Why would voters choose candidates who don’t agree with them on such key issues?

But when you talk to Patrick, you see why it makes sense – how economic anxiety continues to trump everything for so many voters.

The exit polls show a midterm electorate that skews more conservative than the one that reelected Obama two years ago. But it still shows solid majorities among those voters for some traditionally liberal policy stances. Fifty-seven percent of voters said illegal immigrants working in the United States should be offered a chance to apply for legal status. Equal numbers said climate change is a serious problem.

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Perhaps most strikingly, nearly two-thirds of voters said the economic system favors the wealthy, including one-third of voters who chose Republicans.

The exits also show a dismal national opinion of the economic recovery that began officially in 2009. Seven in 10 voters rated the economy negatively. Nearly 8 in 10 are worried about its direction in the future.

The simplest way to read the election results is that the economy remains voters’ top concern, and they punished the party that controls the White House for its condition.

Patrick, for instance, has completely lost faith in Obama, whom he called “pretentious” and “a liar” on economic issues. He said health coverage was too expensive for him to afford under the president’s signature health-care law, and that he was working fewer hours to allow his children to qualify for low-cost insurance coverage through the state of New Jersey. “It really sucks,” he says. “I like working. You have a sense of accomplishment.”

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Voters like Patrick are there for Democrats or Republicans to snag in 2016. They’re not a trivial number: If Democrats had won every voter who calls climate a serious problem and says the economy favors the wealthy, they would have won the nationwide vote for the House.

The exit polls can’t tell us what those voters want Congress and the president to do, exactly, on the economy. Patrick can give us a clue: He’d like the parties to come together and pass some things that help folks like him. His hopes aren’t high for the politics — “I don’t really know at this point how it would actually work” – or, really, for his own short-term economic future.