They are scared in Colorado, worried about Ebola and illegal immigration. They are angry in North Carolina, persuaded that the president aims to take their guns and limit their health care. They are frustrated in New Hampshire, searching in vain for politicians who will admit the success of the Affordable Care Act.

On Election Day 2014, more than two years before the end of a two-term presidency that floated into being on a cloud of hope, voters sound sullen, even surly. And some non-voters pronounce themselves almost audaciously hopeless, dismissing the multibillion-dollar political campaign industry as a cynical sideshow that ignores the pain of Americans who have lost jobs, see no career paths and wonder what’s gone wrong with their country.

“I don’t even want to vote for the guy I want to vote for because I’m tired of hearing his name,” said Chelsea Boucher, 31, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She cast her ballot for Democratic incumbents in the Senate and governor’s races, but she did it with no enthusiasm, both because Gov. John Hickenlooper was inundating her TV with commercials and because those ads warned ad nauseam that the other guy would attack women’s reproductive rights, as if that were the only issue women cared about.

There’s an epidemic of annoyance out there, a veritable virus of vitriol, aimed at nearly every politician who approves those incessant, infernal messages that bash the other guy and turn local elections into referenda on a president heading into lame-duck territory.

John Deuser is a registered Republican in Wichita, Kansas, who drifted away from his roots this year to volunteer for independent Senate candidate Greg Orman and vote for Democrat Paul Davis for governor. Deuser felt pushed out of his comfort zone by last year’s government shutdown. The retired accountant, who had spent 20 years working for Pizza Hut, grew disgusted that lawmakers were getting paid while federal employees were furloughed.

“At that point, I said, ‘You know what? I’m not voting for any incumbent,’” Deuser said. “You can’t even get along enough to make some kind of decision to keep the government running? What is that all about?”

But in most races, there was little opportunity to send a throw-the-bums-out message; More than eight in 10 congressional seats, even in this sour political season, were rock-solid locks for the incumbent, either because no serious challenger stepped up or because the district had been carved to render one party’s chances almost nil, or because voters keep reelecting their representative even if they think the capital has become a vile pit of snakes.

According to exit polls, more than half of voters say they’ve had it with the Democrats. And the Republicans. And President Barack Obama.

The Democrats “are not for the people,” said Genevieve Haynes, 72, who lives in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and voted for Republican Larry Hogan for governor. “I was a Democrat up to Jimmy Carter, and that was the end of that. Then I just didn’t vote” for three decades.

She returned to the polls as a Republican, though really she’s become more of a libertarian, except that she considers a third-party vote a waste. As for the Democrats, “the way they’re taxing us, we’re not going to have any money left,” she said. “People who can work should go to work and not be on welfare.”

In Sutton, New Hampshire, Joanna Murphy, 51, is similarly indisposed toward Republicans: “These people don’t represent people like myself that are self-employed, that care about the environment, care about education. They’re in a different world. They care about what’s in their pockets.”

Murphy is miffed by all the ads that bash Democratic candidates for voting with Obama: “What is so wrong with being associated with President Obama?” she asked. “Health-care reform has helped a lot of people. I don’t understand why Democrats are running away from it.”

It was a day of voters heading to the polls with heavy reservations – for legalizing marijuana even as they worried that the nation was medicating itself to avoid dark realities, for incumbents even as they blamed the people in office for doing nothing.

Rick Waldenmeyer, 70, a retired salesman in Leawood, Kansas, is a registered Republican who says Washington has become “a dark hole,” a den of dysfunction. “It used to be, even if there were great disagreements, people were able to get together for the common good,” he said. “Now it’s, ‘Hey, my way or the highway.’ “

Even so, Waldenmeyer voted for Republican Sen. Pat Roberts because “he’s one of those people who will go back and forth, he will work with the Democrats, he will work with the Republicans.”

So many factors go into a vote – family tradition, ideology, a candidate’s personality – that there are inevitably contradictions in how people behave at the polls. In Arkansas, for example, some voters said they supported a measure to raise the minimum wage even as they voted for Republicans who warned that higher minimums would lead employers to hire fewer people.

The economy remains a sore spot for many Americans – in exit polls, 7 in 10 midterm voters say the economy is doing poorly, and an even larger share are worried about the economy’s direction – and as usually happens in politics, the guy at the top is held accountable.

“There’s been so many Obama crises, I can’t keep track of them,” said Denell Whittingham, 62, in Harrisburg, Arkansas. As she chose between Mark Pryor and Tom Cotton in the Senate race, she thought not of policy positions but of the president and her roll call of crises: immigration, Ebola, the Secret Service, Obamacare.

“It’s kind of like we’re all tired and weary,” she said.

At PJ’s Coffee in Baton Rouge, Lauren Merrell, 22, a barista and a psychology major at Louisiana State University, also said she would not vote: “I’ve been too busy with school and work.” Merrell, who has amassed college loans that she said “are closer to $50,000 than zero,” concluded from all the ads that “as a young person, I feel I’m not represented. When we get out, there are no jobs for us.”

In Pella, Iowa, Duane Sabin, a wiry 62 year-old, didn’t want to say whom he voted for, only that “I voted for the person who has lied the best.”

He said he has lost faith in politicians: “You ever hear of swollen-head disease? It’s when people have such big heads you can’t even fit it into your car. That’s what our politicians suffer from. Maybe it’s a virus.”

Washington Post staff writers Jose DelReal in New Hampshire, Karen Heller in Louisiana, Elahe Izadi in Kansas, Kathryn Le Dain in Maryland, Wesley Lowrey in North Carolina, Ed O’Keefe in Georgia, Sebastian Payne in Alaska, Hunter Schwarz in Arkansas, Ben Terris in Iowa and Katie Zezima in Colorado contributed to this report.