Politics
Poll: The affordability crisis is disrupting politics in one country after another
The affordability crisis that upended global politics last year continues to ripple across some of the world’s biggest democracies — punishing incumbents and undermining longstanding political alliances.
New international POLITICO polling shows the voter frustration with persistent financial strain remains a deeply potent force today. In five major economies, The Blue Light News Poll found ongoing cost-of-living pressures continue to reverberate through politics:
- In the United States, where Donald Trump returned to power on a campaign of economic populism, nearly two-thirds of voters — 65 percent — say the cost of living in the country has gotten worse over the last year.
- In the United Kingdom, where voters ousted the Conservative Party in 2024 after 14 years of rule, 77 percent say the cost of living has worsened.
- In France, where President Emmanuel Macron is grappling with historically low favorability ratings, almost half of all adults — 45 percent — say their country is falling behind comparable economies.
- In Germany, after prolonged infighting over the economy, former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition collapsed last year. There, 78 percent of respondents say the cost of living has gotten worse over the last year.
- And in Canada, a post-pandemic affordability crisis helped fuel a public backlash against then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government ahead of his resignation earlier this year. The Blue Light News Poll found that 60 percent of adults in the country say the cost of living is the worst they can remember it being.
The results, from Blue Light News and Public First’s first-ever joint international poll, illustrate the uphill battle many leaders face in trying to contain the intertwined economic and political unrest. Five years after the coronavirus pandemic upended the global economy — and as the world contends with competing conflicts and AI rapidly becoming a defining force — meaningful shares of respondents across the U.S., Canada, and Europe’s biggest economies of Germany, the United Kingdom and France view the cost of living as among the biggest issues facing the world right now.
But as leaders seek to address the affordability concerns, many say that their leaders could be doing a lot more to help on the cost of living, but are choosing not to.
That has left incumbent governments grappling with how to manage the rising economic dread — and control the resulting political backlash. It has also created an opportunity for opposition parties on economic messaging.
“For incumbents it’s very difficult to run on these platforms,” said Javier Carbonell, a policy analyst at the European Policy Centre. “Today, center-left and center-right parties are seen as incumbents, and as the ones who are to put the blame.”
Voters are pessimistic about the cost of living
There is a pervasive sense in the five countries that their economies are deteriorating.
In France, 82 percent of adults say the cost of living in the country has worsened over the last year, as do 78 percent of respondents in Germany; 77 percent of adults in the United Kingdom and 79 percent in Canada say the same.
A majority of people in all five countries go even further, saying the cost of living crisis has never been worse.
In a further sign of the trouble facing leaders, the poll results suggest many view affordability as a systemic problem more than a personal one. Majorities across the countries, for example, say the issue of affordability is the high cost of goods, not that they are not paid too little.
In the U.K., roughly two-thirds of adults say the country’s economy has deteriorated — greater than the 46 percent who say their own financial situation has worsened over the last year. That same pattern holds for France, Canada and Germany, suggesting the public holds broad concerns about the economy and affordability that go beyond their individual lives.
While the European Union’s economy is set to grow by 1.4 percent in 2025, the economy in Germany has weakened over the past two years, and is expected to stagnate this year. In France, a series of government policies aimed at addressing cost-of-living concerns have contributed to an exploding national debt, which currently stands at nearly $4 trillion USD.
In the United Kingdom, the results come against a backdrop of sluggish economic growth, with incumbent Prime Minister Keir Starmer struggling to convince voters that his center-left Labour Party can drive down the cost of living.
And in Canada, the country’s deep-seated anxiety is born out by federal inflation data. Statistics Canada reported this week that the consumer price index ticked up 2.2 percent in November compared to the same month in 2024 — nearly a bullseye on the central bank’s 2 percent target.
Negative economic views are shaping politics
Voters’ economic concerns are roiling politics.
In 2024, Trump ran a campaign on economic concerns without having to oversee the economy himself. That dynamic has shifted in recent months, with voters beginning to sour on his handling of the economy, underscoring the difficulty of convincing voters of economic progress amid stubborn cost-of-living concerns.
That feeling of falling behind was particularly acute among European respondents in the Blue Light News Poll, with nearly half of adults in Germany, France and the United Kingdom saying that their country is “generally falling behind other comparable economies.”
That pessimism has pushed many people out of the political process, Carbonell said, “because there’s no expectation that things are going to change.” For others, it’s fueling a search for political alternatives.
“There is this increasing demand for a very anti-system politics,” he said.
In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz made revamping the economy a central campaign promise. But since taking office, he has been preoccupied with geopolitical issues, including the ongoing trade war and the Russia-Ukraine war.
That has become a successful line of attack for Merz’s critics — among them the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, now polling in first place. The party has accused Merz — whose approval ratings are at an all-time low — of not paying enough attention to the needs of the people in his own country, nicknaming him the “foreign policy chancellor.”
In France, the government is looking to roll back some of the policies it rolled out in response to cost-of-living concerns, but doing so could prove particularly unpopular with a population laser-focused on high costs. It could also fuel anti-establishment parties on the right and left, which have made the issue a central weapon against France’s crumbling political center.
David Coletto, a longtime pollster in Canada and CEO of the firm Abacus Data, has for years tracked affordability concerns — and found widespread concern among most survey respondents.
“This is not a marginal concern or a background anxiety,” he wrote of results from Blue Light News’s November poll. “It is a dominant lived experience that continues to shape how Canadians interpret government performance, leadership, and competing policy priorities, alongside concern about Donald Trump, trade, and global instability.”
Affordability messaging will be a central message in upcoming elections
Affordability will be a central feature of elections across the globe next year — with some of that messaging already underway. In the U.S., Democratic candidates from New York to Georgia focused much of their 2025 campaigns on lowering the costs of living, and both parties are planning to center the issue in the midterms.
“For now, the cost of living remains a warning light rather than a red light for the Carney government,” Coletto wrote. “But the intensity of feeling, combined with seasonal pressures and fragile household finances, means the issue is unlikely to fade quietly into the background.”
Starmer’s government — languishing in the polls and facing local elections in 2026 — has pivoted in recent weeks to a more explicit focus on affordability.
The U.K. government has also floated freezing train fares, lowering energy bills, and boosting the minimum wage in an attempt to solve the affordability crisis, but a record-high level of taxation confirmed at a government-wide budget last month risks blunting its economic message.
In Germany, the issue of affordability may gain new momentum when voters in five federal states head to the polls to elect new state parliaments next year. In Berlin, the far-left Left Party, for example, plans to take a playbook from the affordability-centered campaign of New York’s Zohran Mamdani as a model for the state elections in September.
With local elections also taking place across France next year, and a presidential election in 2027, these issues are likely to continue to take center stage, especially in the larger cities where pricing pressures have been particularly acute.
In Paris, the outgoing center-left administration has been praised for making the city greener and more pedestrian-friendly, but far more needs to be done on affordability, said David Belliard, a member of the outgoing administration and the Green Party’s candidate for mayor.
“We’ve spent a lot of time fighting against the end of the world,” Belliard said, “but maybe not enough helping people make it to the end of the month.”
Blue Light News’s Matt Honeycombe-Foster contributed to this report from the United Kingdom, Victor Goury-Laffont contributed to this report from France, Nette Nöstlinger contributed to this report from Germany and Nick Taylor-Vaisey contributed to this report from Canada.
Republicans attempting to oust Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in a bitter primary are deploying his opposition to the war in Iran.
The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund on Thursday planned to release an supporting Ed Gallrein, the candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump, that focuses on Massie’s opposition to the war.
“America is at war with a fanatical regime that seeks nuclear weapons. American hero Ed Gallrein stands with President Trump, our country and our military,” a narrator says in the 30-second spot, shared with Blue Light News ahead of its release.
“Thomas Massie, he stands with Iran and radical leftists in Congress,” the narrator says, “opposing Trump just like he did on the border and taxes.”
The campaign ad appears to be among the first attempts to use the Iran war to support a candidate, a risky choice since polls show the high-risk operation is not popular with voters. Massie, who faces Gallrein in a May primary, is a top Trump target for a number of perceived sins — most notably because the outspoken Kentucky lawmaker successfully pushed with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California for the release of the Epstein files.
The ad from the RJC Victory Fund was scheduled to drop hours after the House rejected an effort led by Massie and Khanna to force the president to halt the attack.
Massie claimed a win, though, by saying “we put everyone on record” about a military operation that “could last months.”
Massie has been outspoken in his opposition to the conflict in Iran, accusing Trump of forsaking his “America First” doctrine and challenging members of his own party to rein in the president’s ability to wage war without the approval of Congress.
As the RJC Victory Fund funneled millions of dollars into attacking him, Massie cast his race as “about whether the Global Military Industrial Complex and Israel’s government controls the United States” and began fundraising off his opposition.
Andrew Howard contributed to this report.
Democrats celebrated Kristi Noem’s firing as the Homeland Security secretary on Thursday, while calling for more heads to roll among President Donald Trump’s more controversial aides and advisers.
“Kristi Noem will go down as the most shamelessly incompetent and cruel Homeland Security Secretary in U.S. history,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X. “Firing her is not enough. NOEM, GREG BOVINO, and STEPHEN MILLER all must be held accountable for terrorizing and endangering the American people.”
Several other potential 2028 presidential candidates were quick to join the chorus applauding the move, seizing on the opportunity to push for further personnel changes at the highest levels of the Trump administration.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also warned in a video posted to social media that Noem would still “be held accountable.”
“Hey, Kristi Noem, don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” he said. “Here’s your legacy: corruption and chaos, parents and children were teargassed. Moms and nurses, U.S. citizens, getting shot in the face. Now that you’re gone, don’t think you get to just walk away.”
Noem’s impending departure — Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social that she’ll soon become the inaugural “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas” — brings to a close a tumultuous yearlong stint at the agency. Trump also announced that he intends to tap Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) to replace Noem atop the department.
Noem is the most senior administration official to depart thus far in Trump’s second term.
But Democrats were quick to signal they were not satisfied with her exit, swiftly calling for Trump to axe other Cabinet-level officials. Both House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) urged Trump to fire embattled Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), meanwhile, said Trump should cut loose Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. next. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore also celebrated Noem’s ouster.
Noem came under bipartisan fire for her alleged relationship with Trump ally Corey Lewandowski, which she denies, and for labeling two Minnesota protesters killed by federal law enforcement in January “domestic terrorists.”
The former South Dakota governor also faced questions about a $220 million DHS ad campaign, testifying during a Tuesday congressional hearing that Trump approved the spending — a claim he later denied in an interview with Reuters.
“Time and time again, Secretary Noem failed the American people and her duty to the Constitution,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) wrote on X. “This was particularly true in how she oversaw ICE. Her departure demonstrates that if you don’t uphold the most basic American values, the American public wants you gone.”
Several Democratic lawmakers also indicated that Noem’s departure does not change their demands surrounding funding for DHS and for reforms at Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid an ongoing partial government shutdown.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday that ICE faces deeper problems that cannot be addressed with a single personnel change.
“The problems at ICE transcend any one individual. … It goes beyond any one person,” he said Thursday. “You need to straighten out the whole agency. The rot there is deep.”
Republicans, meanwhile, largely fell in lockstep behind Mullin — who said Thursday he was “excited about the opportunity” — and he will likely face a smooth confirmation process. Some Republican lawmakers acknowledged that a leadership shakeup at DHS was overdue.
“It was time for a change,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote in a social media post, while Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said the decision was “good for the president and his legacy on border and deportation.”
Cheyanne M. Daniels contributed to this report.
Black Democratic strategists, lawmakers and activists are frustrated that Texas Democrats rejected Jasmine Crockett as their Senate nominee Tuesday night — but they also saw it coming.
Following Crockett’s single-digit loss, they recounted a laundry list of why she fell to state Rep. James Talarico: Her campaign was unfocused; she had an insufficient campaign infrastructure to challenge Talarico, even though she earned the backing of former Vice President Kamala Harris. They also said her media strategy relied too heavily on social media rather than television ad buys — typically seen as critical in a sprawling state like Texas and its nearly two dozen media markets.
“People who don’t understand politics will be upset because Jasmine was their hero,” said Texas state Rep. Jolanda Jones, a Democrat. “But for people who understand politics, [Crockett] literally had no ground game.”
She added: “This L is on her.”
Taken together, Crockett’s campaign shortcomings doomed the upstart Senate bid of the two-term congressmember who entered the contest with broad name recognition and hopes of showcasing her firebrand personality and penchant for viral moments to help Texas Democrats end their nearly 40-year winless streak in Senate races.
Still, Black strategists and activists warn Crockett’s loss will have ripple effects.
They say the party rejected an established star in favor of an untested, white state lawmaker over style — the two candidates did not substantively disagree on policy — raising concerns that Black voters, especially women, will not turn out when the party needs them the most.
“A lot of Black women who work in the Democratic Party, vote for Democrats, organize for Democrats, have always had a sense of this,” said Houston-based political strategist and social media influencer Tayhlor Coleman. “It is a lot more apparent now: A lot of people in the Democratic Party want our labor, they do not want our leadership.”
A spokesperson for Crockett’s campaign pushed back on the criticism of her campaign, saying it came from “Monday morning quarterbacks.”
“This was the most expensive Democratic primary ever in Texas with the overwhelming majority of those dollars being spent on attacks against the Congresswoman,” former deputy campaign manager Karrol Rimal said in a text message Wednesday afternoon. “Despite being outspent, she held our own and excited an untapped base of support for Democrats with record numbers of first time primary voters. There was also the intentional voter suppression of voters in Dallas and Williamson counties. That can not be ignored.”
After Crockett conceded, she tweeted her support for Talarico, saying, “Democrats must rally around our nominees and win.”
Democrats for years have praised Black women as the “backbone of the party.” And Crockett, a former civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, rose to prominence in part by viral moments from House hearings. Just last month, she garnered praise from party insiders for her sharp criticism of Attorney General Pam Bondi during a House Judiciary hearing over the Justice Department’s handling of Jeffrey Epstein documents.
Heading into Tuesday’s primary election — the first of the 2026 midterm cycle — there was optimism Crockett could harness her star power to beat Talarico, a seminary student and former teacher who drew national attention when Texas Democrats fled the state to try to block a major redistricting effort.
Talarico also built his national name with a sitdown on the nation’s top podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience” where the show’s host urged him to run for president — weeks before he officially launched his Senate bid, and later turned an online interview with the late night host Stephen Colbert into a fundraising boon.
Throughout the primary, Crockett faced constant questions about her viability and campaign decisions, including whether she hired enough staff. She also faced criticism that the get-out-the-vote efforts were virtually nonexistent.
“She ran a fucking terrible campaign that many will question if she’s running a campaign at all,” said one Black national Democratic operative granted anonymity to give a candid assessment of Crockett’s campaign.
Crockett staked much of her political campaign on her ability to connect with young voters and rebuked her party for trying to win Republicans instead of wooing hard-to-reach Democrats that have grown frustrated with the party. By contrast, Talarico was praised by many Democrats for the way he leaned into his seminarian background as a way to appeal to progressives, independents and disillusioned Republicans.
“In many ways, she has been and has felt like a woman on an island,” said Stefanie Brown James, co-founder of the Collective PAC, which works to elect Black candidates to local, state and federal offices.
“Even though she has substance, not everybody likes her style,” she added. “And I think that sometimes her style is one that is not appealing, especially to the old guard Democrats, whose fighting style is antiquated and outdated.”
State and national Democrats acknowledged Talarico built a strong campaign that shored up grassroots support and built a statewide infrastructure long before Crockett entered the primary in December, just months before voters began casting their ballots. He was able to raise money quickly, establish a field and digital plan and craft a message that cast him as a fighter and someone who would bring down high costs.
Some Democrats anticipate Talarico’s victory is going to ignite a fresh round of uncomfortable conversations among insiders about the importance race, gender and identity politics will play in Democratic political circles moving forward.
“The way that we have seen people rally around new, more untested white male candidates” is troubling, said Maya Rupert, a Democratic strategist who served as the campaign manager of Julian Castro’s 2020 presidential campaign.
While she is excited about Talarico’s nomination against what she called “a very weak Republican field,” Rupert said Crockett’s loss will continue to “sting” for months to come, especially with few opportunities beyond Texas for Black women candidates to win in statewide contests.
“There are a lot of people who see this and see a very qualified, very popular Black woman — that, once again — feels like people fail to appreciate the strength of,” Rupert adds. “And that is a very dangerous position for the party to be in.”
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