KINDRED, NORTH DAKOTA - Throughout West Acres, North Dakota's largest shopping mall in Fargo, help wanted signs fill storefront windows.
"It's a very competitive market," said Brad Ruhro, owner of Legacy Toys, a family-owned chain of toys stores with a location at West Acres. Ruhro said that as a toy store owner, it's easy for him to tell when the economy is perking up.
"We're seeing a continual uptick in customers," he said. "When the economy's not so great, they're buying the necessities -- food, supplies that they need to survive. When the economy's doing better, they're able to spend more on entertainment and fun."
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North Dakota has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the country's economic growth. Unemployment in the state is a mere 2.6 percent -- tied with Iowa for the second lowest in the country, after Hawaii with 2.1 percent. North Dakota residents have received the highest average tax cut of any state in the nation -- 10.8 percent or $2,170 a year. A Gallup poll released in early 2018 showed that North Dakota residents tied for first with Wyoming residents for economic confidence scores throughout 2017.
But the realities of economic challenges can complicate voter decisions at the ballot box.
Shopping at West Acres Mall with his wife and daughter for what he described as "just the basics," Michael Norby said he didn't vote for a Democrat or a Republican in the 2016 election.
A college student and a full-time warehouse worker at the local Pepsi factory, Norby said he is the kind of voter who makes decisions on candidates based on how he thinks they can benefit him on income taxes and minimum wage.
"I don't feel it's going up fast enough for people to go out and spend, spend, spend," he said of the economy.
Norby did not vote for Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in 2012 but said he is considering her this time around.
Heitkamp and her opponent, Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer, are locked in one of the tightest Senate races in the country. Trump carried North Dakota by 36 percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 and has endorsed Cramer over Heitkamp.
Brad Ross, a laid-off truck driver, felt differently about the economy than Norby, even though he is paying his bills by taking temporary cleaning and office jobs.
Ross didn't vote in the 2016 presidential election, but he likes the way Trump is handling the economy so much that he said he would vote for him now.
"I think he's taken some pretty good strides in straightening things out, like bringing our jobs back here where they belong," he said. Despite his admiration for Trump, Ross said that he will vote to re-elect Heitkamp to the Senate because she is "tough."
Throughout the country, congressional Republicans like Cramer are attempting to succeed at the polls on Trump's promise to build a strong economy, pursue an America-first approach to jobs, and spur economic growth with the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act.
Record stock market surges and a four-year high growth rate of 4.2 percent reinforce the president's case that the U.S. economy is surging.
"We're the optimists in this country," Cramer told a group of campaign volunteers marching in a parade in this tiny North Dakota town late last month. "We're the people that see America as a land of opportunity," he said. "Not the land of doom and gloom."
Yet that's a message Democrats are attempting to counter in a bid to win control of the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate in the looming midterm elections.
Heitkamp told VOA that positive, large-scale economic numbers should be celebrated.
"But if you get down into the weeds and look at county by county, state by state, the numbers can be quite different," she said.
Larger-scale economic gains can be difficult for many voters to feel in their daily lives as they look for ways to stretch their paychecks to cover rising living costs.
Inflation-adjusted wages remain flat or slightly lower than a year ago, according to some analyses. That leaves diminished purchasing power to pay the rent or mortgage, put food on the table, and cover rising health care costs.
Voters heading to the polls this November will have to decide which party's take on the economy best describes the state of their pocketbook.
In rural North Dakota, where the economy is dependent on farming, Trump's tariffs on economic competitors could play a large role in voters' decisions.