I spent the better part of a year trying to answer one question: Why do Americans feel this bad about an economy that, on paper, is this good? Some 74% of Americans rate the economy as poor, not far off the 84% who said the same in 2009, when the country was shedding jobs by the hundreds of thousands.

People who handed me, a stranger, their bank statements because nobody else was asking aren’t going to be won over by a mailer. “Cooling” inflation sounds like an insult to people whose rent doubled and stayed doubled. When a family is one ordinary bill from the edge, its backup plan is sleeping in the car. People who spent years blaming themselves have started blaming the people in charge. Parents and grandparents are wondering if their children will get to stay in the places they built. 

This is an electorate that is angry and unconvinced its vote changes anything. In the closest races in the country, it may not matter which candidate has the better plan. It may matter which one people finally believe was listening.

I built the spreadsheets first. I’m a numbers guy, and I won’t apologize for it. But the spreadsheets didn’t explain it. More than four dozen people across six episodes did, though, at their own kitchen tables, usually with their bills spread out in front of us.

Here are the five things they taught me that no top-line number will.