Washington ? Voters’ attention is more on focused on domestic issues than foreign policy, say pre-election polls, but that attention doesn’t appear to be giving Democrats the widespread advantage they hoped for in Tuesday’s closely matched congressional elections.

When voters were asked which issues were most important in deciding their vote for Congress, economic issues such as the recession, jobs, taxes and the budget deficit were twice as likely to be named as foreign policy issues like Iraq, terrorism and national security, according to a poll released Sunday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

“There’s no national trend apparent in this poll or any other this cycle,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. “The outcome of this election will be determined on a race-by-race basis with candidate qualities and local issues dominant.”

Recent polls have shown Democrats and Republicans generally even on the question of who could best handle the economy, though Democrats have a slight edge in some races.

“Given the fact that consumer confidence is at a 9-year low, you would have expected that to help Democrats,” Kohut said. “But there’s not a clear margin of advantage for Democrats over Republicans on the economy.”

Democratic national Chairman Terry McAuliffe said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “the issues are on our side, the economy, Social Security, prescription drugs.”

Some political analysts have suggested that Democrats don’t have an advantage on the economy because they haven’t offered a clear alternative.

Republican national Chairman Marc Racicot said he wasn’t surprised Democrats hadn’t gained a clear advantage on the economy.

Racicot, also on NBC, mentioned the international problems like terrorism that have been affecting the economy and said: “This recession started before (Bush) took office. The American people know precisely what’s going on.”

The Pew poll showed the congressional race remains very close, while a CBS-New York Times poll out this weekend gave the Republicans a slight edge.

Men leaned Republican by 55-38; women leaned Democratic by about the same margin. Married voters leaned Republicans, while unmarried voters leaned Democratic.

The Pew poll of 1,018 likely voters taken Oct. 30 through Saturday has an error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.