Politics
Dems keep beating Republicans on affordability. Our new poll shows why.
New polling shows many Americans have begun to blame President Donald Trump for the high costs they’re feeling across virtually every part of their lives — and it’s shifting politics.
Almost half — 46 percent — say the cost of living in the U.S. is the worst they can ever remember it being, a view held by 37 percent of 2024 Trump voters. Americans also say that the affordability crisis is Trump’s responsibility, with 46 percent saying it is his economy now and his administration is responsible for the costs they struggle with.
Those are among the new results from The POLITICO Poll that crystallize a growing warning sign for Republicans ahead of next year’s midterms: Some of the very groups that powered Trump’s victory last year are showing signs of breaking from that coalition, and it’s the high cost of living that’s driving them away.
It’s a growing vulnerability that Democrats exploited repeatedly in recent months, with campaigns focused on affordability sweeping key races in last month’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia and powering an overperformance in a deep-red House seat in Tennessee on Tuesday.
“This is a small warning, but it’s one that Republicans need to understand, is that to hold the House in 2026, it’s going to be an all-hands-on-deck effort,” GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said after the Tennessee election, where Republican Matt Van Epps beat Democrat Aftyn Behn by 9 points, but underperformed against Trump’s 22-point margin in 2024.
One year ago, Trump’s economic message helped him piece together a diverse winning coalition, fueling his return to the White House amid widespread frustration over spiraling inflation.
Then Trump, after campaigning against Joe Biden, inherited the economy he spent months attacking, and both parties were anticipating the moment when voters would begin to turn their blame to the new incumbent.
Almost one year into Trump’s term, that shift is well underway.
The Blue Light News Poll, conducted by Public First, found that despite Trump’s continued support among the Republican base, his softest supporters — the ones the GOP most needs to hold onto next year — are expressing concern.
Republicans were already worried about how they can turn out lower-propensity voters during a midterm cycle when Trump himself is not on the ballot. Now Democrats are also trying to peel away their voters by focusing aggressively on affordability, which remains a top priority for 56 percent of Americans, according to The Blue Light News Poll. As was the case in November, affordability was central to the Tennessee special election, with Behn repeatedly centering her campaign on an affordability pitch.
“Republicans have long had the advantage on dealing with the economy, but if [it] remains in the doldrums and prices remain high, it’s harder to find a good job, they will blame the party in power, and that’s Republicans,” said Arizona-based Republican strategist Barrett Marson.
Republicans’ growing vulnerabilities on the economy represent a stark inversion on an issue that has long defined the GOP, and presents an emerging splintering in Trump’s 2024 winning coalition as his party heads into a high-stakes midterm fight.
Three-quarters of Trump voters say they trust the Republican Party over Democrats to reduce the overall cost of living. But his numbers are far weaker among those who say they voted for him, but do not identify as “MAGA Republicans” — 61 percent, compared to 88 percent of MAGA-aligned voters — pointing to a possible weak spot in his coalition.
Even among Trump voters a meaningful portion — nearly 1 in 5 — say Trump holds full responsibility for the state of the current economy.
The White House disputes that Trump is losing ground on the economy. “Cleaning up Joe Biden’s economic disaster has been a Day One priority for President Trump,” spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement.
“President Trump is just getting started implementing the policies that created historic economic prosperity in his first term, and Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”
Americans agree that affordability is their top priority, and they hold Trump responsible for addressing it
Across parties, age groups, races, genders and income levels, Americans say the cost of living is the nation’s top problem, The Blue Light News Poll finds, a sign that the economy will again overshadow other political topics in next year’s midterms.
The poll underscores just how pervasive the affordability crisis cuts across Americans’ everyday lives. A 45 percent plurality list grocery costs as the most challenging things to afford, followed by 38 percent who say housing costs and 34 percent who say health care. (Respondents could select multiple responses.)
Forty-three percent of Americans — including 31 percent of Trump voters — say there is less economic opportunity in the U.S. now than there has been in the past.
Other indicators present a similarly bleak view: Consumer sentiment fell in November to one of its lowest levels on record, according to the University of Michigan.
And while Trump frequently points to his predecessor to deflect blame for inflation and high prices, the survey reveals that defense is starting to crack.
More Americans say Trump holds most or all responsibility for the economy (46 percent) than say Biden does (29 percent).
“Voters aren’t going to go, ‘I voted for Trump to better the economy, but Biden just hamstrung [him] too much,’” Marson said. “Voters are going to very quickly forget about Joe Biden and just as quickly turn their ire to Trump unless things get better.”
The survey underscores how Trump is now running into the kinds of economic headwinds that dogged Biden and the Democratic Party during the 2024 campaign.
While inflation rates have fallen from a high of 9.1 percent during the Biden administration to roughly 3 percent last month, voters’ frustration with the cost of living has remained elevated.
Biden repeatedly pointed to job growth to argue the economy was strong, even as prices rose. Now Republicans — who repeatedly hammered Biden over his handling of affordability concerns — are increasingly concerned that Trump is taking a similar tact.
“It’s striking to see President Trump make the same mistake,” said Michael Strain, the director of Economic Policy Studies at the historically conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
Voters say Trump isn’t doing enough, and it’s fracturing his coalition
The survey shows that there is a limit to how long Trump voters are willing to give him to deliver on a core campaign pledge. Already, 1 in 5 say he has had a chance to change the economy but has not taken it, underscoring how an issue that helped Trump form his coalition is now splitting it.
A significant portion of Trump’s voters last year did not come from his base — more than a third, 38 percent, self-identified as not being a “MAGA Republican” in the survey — and those voters are more likely than self-identified MAGA Republicans to hold a pessimistic view of Trump’s handling of the economy.
Among non-MAGA Trump voters, 29 percent say Trump has had a chance to change things in the economy but hasn’t taken it — more than double the 11 percent of MAGA voters who say Trump had not taken his opportunity.
Non-MAGA Republicans were also much more likely than MAGA voters to say the Trump administration is more responsible for the things they find difficult to afford, including grocery costs, utility bills and health care costs.
Democrats are eager to take advantage of the shifting politics of affordability and make the 2026 midterms a referendum on Trump’s economic record — and plan to link GOP candidates up and down the ballot to his policies.
Democrats from New York to Georgia zeroed in on affordability to propel them to victory in last month’s elections, and many party leaders believe it’s a playbook that candidates should follow closely next year.
“House Republicans should 100 percent expect to see ads next year calling them out for their broken promise to lower prices and for supporting Trump’s tariffs,” CJ Warnke, a spokesperson for the Democratic super PAC House Majority PAC, said in a statement.
Republicans, for their part, argue they’re the ones focused on reducing costs. “While Democrats are fighting amongst themselves on who can be the next Zohran Mamdani socialist, Republicans are laser-focused on lowering costs, rebuilding prosperity, and delivering relief for the middle class,” NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement.
Trump allies also say he’s making an affordability pitch, even if voters aren’t yet feeling improvements in their daily lives. But Trump himself has sent mixed messages on the issue.
On Saturday, he posted on Truth Social about drug prices that he claimed are falling so fast Republicans should easily win the midterms, declaring: “I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT.”
Days later, he said “affordability” is a “Democrat scam” and “con job” during a Tuesday Cabinet meeting.
“They just say the word,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. They just say it — affordability. I inherited the worst inflation in history, there was no affordability. Nobody could afford anything.”
Statewide ballot measures are flying under the national radar — but some are drawing big spending.
At least $400 million has been spent on TV ads for ballot initiatives, according to data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. The 145 ballot measures across 39 states include fights attracting the attention of future presidential candidates and millions from dark-money groups on both sides of the aisle.
The focus of this year’s ballot measures reflect broader shifts in the political discourse. The number of abortion-related initiatives has dropped precipitously since 2022 as states have had time to determine their individual laws following the repeal of Roe v. Wade. At the same time, voters in five states will weigh in on ballot measures focusing on transgender issues, the most in history.
Here are the most consequential ballot initiatives facing voters in November:
California’s wealth tax
By far the most expensive and most aggressively targeted ballot measure in November is California’s Prop 40, which if passed would levy a one-time 5% tax on the state’s billionaires. An eye-watering $92 million has been spent on TV ads debating the issue, mostly on the “No” side, although that pales in comparison to what the Silicon Valley tycoons opposing the initiative like tech investor Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Sergey Brin would be forced to pay should it pass.
Leading progressive figures including Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna are backing the “Yes” side. Caught in the middle is Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, who’s opposed the measure even as he’s tried to claim some populist credibility by proposing a national tax hike on billionaires. A Citrin-POLITICO poll earlier this month found the measure receiving 46% support, short of the majority needed to pass.
Newsom and Brin are both backing another ballot measure, Prop 42, a separate question that would cancel out the Prop 40 wealth tax if it passes. If both pass, Prop 42 could still cancel out Prop 40 if it receives more votes.
Redistricting wars continue
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is making himself the face of a constitutional amendment that, if it passes, would pave the way for the state legislature to draw new lines turning the state’s lone GOP House seat solidly blue. Moore, a potential presidential candidate in 2028, is taking a cue from Newsom, who passed a redistricting referendum last year that is likely to swing five House seats in favor of Democrats. Former President Barack Obama cut an adfor the “Yes” campaign this week.
Missouri Democrats recently won a contentious legal battle that barred the GOP from using a new gerrymander to erase a Kansas City-area Democratic seat held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and allowed voters a referendum on whether that gerrymander will be used in future elections.. Now, voters get to choose what the state does going forward. The campaign pushing “No” on the referendum reported raising $6 million earlier this month, with big help from Democratic megadonors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
Transgender rights restrictions hit the ballot
This year marks the first time multiple states have taken up ballot initiatives focusing on transgender issues.
The six initiatives across Colorado, Missouri, Washington, Arizona and Nebraska help make up the most LGBTQ-related ballot measures in a year since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015. Each of the measures asks voters to either ban transgender surgeries for minors or restrict access to girls sports for transgender girls.
Abortion access measures in four states
Measures in Nevada and Virginia would enshrine abortion access in those states’ constitutions, similar to measures that have passed over the last few years in Ohio, Michigan, Montana and other states.
A measure in Idaho, which would override the state’s near-total ban, is a statutory change rather than a constitutional one, meaning the GOP-dominated state legislature could (and is expected to) vote to override it if it passes.
Missouri has a social conservative combo: a proposition to overturn the abortion-rights constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2024 and reinstate a near-total ban on the procedure that would also prohibit gender transition surgeries for minors. Advocacy groups on both sides are pouring millions into the initiatives, with abortion rights groups spending $22.5 million and anti-abortion groups spending $8.7 million on TV ads, with most of that money being spent in Missouri.
Voting on voting
Over a dozen ballot measures will weigh election administration rules for future elections. In seven states,voters could approve requirements for valid ID to vote. Six states will give voters the chance to explicitly codify in state law that only U.S. citizens can vote in the state. Massachusetts voters will weigh in on whether to establish a top-two nonpartisan primary system, like California has, while Alaska voters will decide if the state will end its top-four primary and ranked-choice voting laws in favor of traditional party primaries and first-past-the-post vote counting.
Republicans rethink their attacks on AOC
lead image
EAU CLAIRE, Wisconsin — In this rural-heavy stretch of the upper Midwest, Democrats are trying to claw back districts where their party brand is still deeply toxic.
It won’t be easy, even in a midterm environment that heavily favors their party. Local Democratic organizers in western Wisconsin, where Rebecca Cooke is trying to oust GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden, know that elections here are decided by the slimmest of margins. They have no room for error.
“Everything’s on a razor’s edge,” Clara Serrano, who volunteers for the local Democratic Party, said as she drove along farms and cornfields outside Eau Claire.
But a decade after President Donald Trump’s populism and culture wars swung the formerly Democratic-leaning region right, many voters from western Wisconsin over to southern Minnesota and down to eastern Iowa are hurting — and blame the president’s policies. Family farms are reeling from his tariffs. Diesel is over $6 a gallon. The cost of fertilizer has shot up more than 30 percent since the war in Iran began earlier this year.
“[Rural voters are] mad when we get to the door — and not at us,” said William Garcia, co-chair of the La Crosse County Democratic Party who has been out canvassing. “They’re mad about gas prices. They’re mad about fertilizer. They’re mad about the tariffs. And so all we do as Democrats is say, ‘Hey, we agree. We rejected all of these things. We’ve been fighting all of these things.’ So it’s much more receptive now than really it’s ever been.”
Local Democrats have pulled out all the stops to propel Cooke in Wisconsin’s 3rd District, knocking endless doors in redder areas. There have been national reinforcements as well: Populist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) endorsed Cooke during the primary and hit the campaign trail with her this week in Eau Claire. The national party is trying to make generational gains in Minnesota’s 1st District — where they’re hoping to pull off a major upset to unseat GOP Rep. Brad Finstad in a Trump +12 district — and in deep-red Iowa, where Democrats are targeting three GOP House seats, a Senate seat and the governorship.
Democrats for years have faltered with rural voters in these districts. Now, with polling showing Democrats gaining ground in redder territory and an electorate that’s souring on the GOP, Democrats hope they can finally make up ground this November — and lay a solid foundation for the 2028 presidential election.
If that doesn’t happen, it’s an ominous sign for the party.
“If we can’t win these seats now in this environment, it seems like we’re in for a world of hurt in 2028,” said one House Democrat, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Wisconsin Democrats have worked nearly-year round to build up a ground game. A major new initiative from the state party has helped to boost organizing, especially in rural counties and other places they’ve struggled.
“We haven’t really stopped organizing since 2024,” said Pete Huff, co-chair of the nearby Dunn County Democratic party, where Trump won by 16 points.
Cooke, who grew up on a farm in the area, has tried to create a more durable brand of politics in the district by largely trying to distance herself from the national Democratic party as she seeks to win over a broader base of voters. It helped in 2024: She overperformed Kamala Harris by 9,000 votes across the district, even though she narrowly lost to Van Orden.
“I think that the party doesn’t know how to speak the language of rural America, and I feel like I uniquely do,” Cooke said in an interview. She regularly canvasses in rural communities and has tried to tie Van Orden to increasingly unpopular data center developments, after local projects sparked backlash. On Sunday, before the campus rally, Cooke attended a meeting for residents worried about a new high-voltage transmission line that would cut through farmland.
This cycle, she’s especially leaned into the rare House endorsement from Sanders, who’s built his own populist and anti-establishment brand. At a Sunday rally on the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus, she introduced the Vermont senator by saying: “Everyone forgets he’s an independent.”
Potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders see the stakes of winning back rural-heavy districts as well.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is traveling to Minnesota’s 1st District on Sunday to rally voters for Democrat Jake Johnson in Rochester.
It’s one of the many once-safe red seats that Republicans and Trump’s political operation are scrambling to shore up in these final days, with Johnson and Finstad running in what’s become a highly competitive race. Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, then a high school teacher, won a House seat here in a 2006 wave election amid voter anger at the Iraq war and their GOP incumbent. Also that year, a local prosecutor named Amy Klobuchar swept to a big Senate win, part of a Democratic surge across the region.
Democrats are hopeful that history is repeating, with high costs and a president unpopular because of a Middle East incursion hurting the GOP in the region and nationally.
“The price of diesel is devastating,” said Ted Winter, who farms with his son near Fulda.
“We’ve patterned a lot of our campaign after Amy Klobuchar, who famously shows up in every single county every single year,” Johnson, a math teacher, said in an interview. “And so I just said, ‘hey guys, let’s host a town hall in every county.’”
National Republicans for months brushed off concerns from local Republicans that Finstad’s race was growing increasingly competitive. Pro-Trump super PACs only recently injected their first cash of the race into the district, with the latest total quickly hitting several million dollars — an unheard-of prospect just a few weeks ago. The National Republican Congressional Committee spent for the first time in the race Tuesday. Democratic groups, on the other hand, started spending in the contest over the summer — and the leading House Democratic super PAC just responded with a $2.2 million money dump and a last-minute TV ad campaign.
Finstad said in an interview at a local textile mill in Faribault that he flagged money concerns to national Republicans weeks ago. He also raised those concerns to GOP Whip Tom Emmer, who is from Minnesota.
“We raised that with anybody and everybody that would want to hear it,” Finstad said. “From a global perspective, people were like, ‘Well, you won by 18, you’re fine.’ And, you know, those of us in Minnesota know that this district has always had kind of an independent streak to it.”
But Finstad said the tariffs were helping farmers in some cases, and the massive fraud scandals in Minnesota are keeping Trump voters and Republicans engaged in the final days. That’s one particular drag that could hit Johnson in this area.
Democrats are still optimistic.
“Things are changing in rural America right now,” Klobuchar, who’s now running for governor, told a crowd of volunteers and voters alongside Johnson on Sunday, at a local park in Fairmont. She pointed not only to the tightening 1st District race, but also to neighboring Iowa as proof.
Republicans have grown particularly worried about the Hawkeye State as they’ve privately come to believe Democrats will flip at least one of three congressional seats there. And, they’re alarmed about the prospect of wider losses across a state Trump won by 13 percentage points, should disillusioned Republican voters decide not to turn out in the numbers they need.“Does it feel good to be running neck-and-neck against Democrats in Iowa just days out? No,” said one GOP strategist in Iowa working on a House race. But they noted that long-term demographic make-up of most Iowa districts do not favor Democrats.
Speaker Mike Johnson is traveling to Rep. Zach Nunn’s Des Moines-based district in Iowa on Wednesday to help save the seat. Republican Joe Mitchell, who is running in the nearby seat to replace GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson, is locked within the margin of error in his race against Democrat Lindsay James, according to two people with direct knowledge of internal polls. And Republicans are largely assuming GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller Meeks’ seat just to the south of that is already gone as she faces Democrat Christina Bohannan.
“The tariffs, the Iran war, the health care cuts, these things are just brutal for the people of Southeast Iowa,” Bohannan said in an interview. That’s why national and local Democrats alike worry if they can’t pull out key wins in the upper Midwest this election season, they will continue to be shut out of power for years. They’re keenly aware that, no matter how frustrated rural voters are with Republicans, they’re still wary of the national Democratic party brand.
“I don’t approach the door as a Democrat,” Jeremiah Fredrickson, who’s running to flip a Wisconsin state assembly seat, said in an interview before he knocked doors in the small, GOP-leaning village of Elk Mound. “My goal is to try to be a representative. I think way too many of our politicians have gotten to the point where they go to Madison, and they forget about the people back here.”
At one door, an older man with white hair looked down at the pamphlet Serrano — the Democratic volunteer for Cooke and Fredrickson — was holding. “You can keep that,” he replied. “I’m not voting for them. No way in hell.”
Van Orden, the Wisconsin Republican racing to hold his seat against Cooke, is skeptical his district’s voters will swing back toward Democrats. That’s despite high prices and Trump’s current unfavorability.
The retired Navy SEAL rode in on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle to the Boon Docks bar as part of a multi-day district tour. After greeting patrons, he told Blue Light News in an interview that Cooke is a “flat-out socialist.” He dismissed Sanders’ draw, saying that “voters here hate career politicians.”
“Is it politically convenient that we’re fighting with the Iranians now? The answer is no,” Van Orden said. “I don’t want gas prices to go up. I also don’t want my grandkids fighting the Iranians … 50 years from now.” But he’s counting on Trump voters to turn out for him.
Across the bar, Deb Bork, who’s in her 70s and lives up the road in the small town of Independence, said she was sticking with Van Orden and Trump, regardless of the “hardship” of higher gas prices, saying the war was a blip compared to the length of other U.S. wars.
She still trusts Trump.
“He feels it’s in the best interest of our country to protect us,” she added. “For so long we’ve been out there protecting everybody else and forgetting about the people that live here.”
- Pelosi in London
- Billionaire taxes, trans rights, abortion, voting rights: This year’s biggest state votes
- Capitol agenda: House GOP eyes Jordan vs. Scalise
- Republicans rethink their attacks on AOC
- The midterms may revive a dying breed: The oil-state Democrat
- New satellites see thousands of methane leaks. Governments shrug.
- Dems have lost in the rural Midwest for years. This might be their time to win it back.
- GOP defense hawks break with Trump ahead of the midterms
- Inside the shadow campaign to lead a diminished House GOP
- Abbott taps tech cash for closing push in Texas governor’s race
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Politics1 year agoJohn Legend advises Trump to drop the ‘dictator s‑‑‑’ if he wants Nobel Peace Prize
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit