Americans' long-simmering frustrations over the high cost of living boiled over Tuesday night to rearrange the nation's political map. Voters decisively swept Democrats to power in the House and Senate after two years of rising prices, a deepening housing crisis and the everyday pain of filling up a gas tank.
"We're just fed up," said Ron Berube, a 64-year-old Lewiston, Maine, resident, who voted for Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) in 2020 but this year voted for her victorious Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson. "A lot of people are sick of Donald Trump. They can't afford it. They can't afford anything."
Among voters polled by the Associated Press, roughly 39% said the economy was the single most important issue facing the country, and nearly 90% said the cost of living was a crucial or major factor in their vote.
Economic anger was closely tied to how voters cast their ballots in Tuesday's House races. Three-quarters of voters described the economy as not so good or poor, and those voters backed Democratic candidates 67% to 29%. Nearly 80% said that inflation has caused their family hardship in the past year.
Rising costs of food, fuel and healthcare were major concerns for voters across the country, according to the AP, and voters placed the blame for the country's economic woes squarely on President Trump, whose decision to go to war in Iran drove up fuel prices. Nearly two-thirds said the president's tariff policies had hurt the national economy and the same share said Trump has made economic conditions worse.
Anger over the Iran war helped sweep Democrats to victory in Senate races deep in Republican turf in Iowa and Kansas, agricultural states where rising gasoline and diesel prices sting particularly hard because per-capita consumption is higher.
The cost of living was a factor in flipping Senate seats in North and South Carolina, states that were once considered affordable but where housing costs have surged since the pandemic, feeding voter anxiety.
And in Maine, Trump's trade war with Canada added to the economic pressures on a state with close ties to its northern neighbor. More than two-thirds of voters in the state told the AP that Trump's tariff policies have hurt the state's economy.
In Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, James Lacoume voted for Trump in 2016 and third-party candidates in 2020 and 2024. On Tuesday, he voted in the Senate race for Democrat Jamie Davis, who lost to Republican Julia Letlow by a narrower margin than many expected. "I'm just not satisfied with the job they're doing," the 54-year-old plastics-plant worker said of the Trump administration.
"The biggest issue right now for me is the economy," he said. "Even though I did not vote for Trump, I was expecting more given his talking points, and instead we just went further and further down."
The nationwide results were a stunning rebuke to a party and a president elected just two years ago by Americans who believed Trump was their best hope for fixing the economy and taming inflation.
In the 2024 election, millions of Americans, including young people and Black and Hispanic voters who don't typically vote Republican, backed Trump in part because they hoped he would bring prices under control. "Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down, and we will make America affordable again," Trump said on the campaign trail.
He promised a new "golden age" of American prosperity. Economic growth surged to an annual rate of 3.4% over the summer, fueled by investment in artificial intelligence and steady consumer spending. The stock market hit record highs, and America's richest residents saw their wealth grow. Last year's tax cuts -- a key Trump campaign promise -- boosted household finances and expanded investment incentives for businesses. Unemployment remains low, and the U.S. is even adding manufacturing jobs again after years of declining factory payrolls.
At the same time, prices haven't come down the way that Trump promised. His tariffs pushed up the cost of goods such as toys and furniture and his decision to attack Iran lifted gasoline prices and led to a sharp rise in inflation this year. Real wages, that is pay with inflation factored in, have been falling for six months. Many Americans are now gloomier about the state of the economy than they were two years ago.
The University of Michigan runs a regular survey tracking consumer sentiment, and October's reading was the second-lowest on record (the lowest was in May) going back to 1952.
Inflation hit 3.7% in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, far higher than the 2.9% annual rate in the last months of former President Joe Biden's term. Price declines were unrealistic to begin with, because they would typically require a punishing recession. And critics argue that much of this increase has been self-inflicted -- the result of Trump's war with Iran, and tariffs -- and compounded by a boom in data-center construction. The inflation hit has been particularly painful for lower-income households, many of whom are also affected by cuts to food stamps.
Gasoline prices are up nearly 50% since the start of the war in Iran in February. Diesel prices have increased by nearly two-thirds, reaching their highest point on record in September. The effect is particularly severe in a handful of swing states, and the prices posted on giant signs are among the most visible in the economy.
In Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire and Texas, a typical household had to spend more than $600 extra on gasoline this year through mid-October because of the Iran war, according to calculations by Brown University's Climate Solutions Lab. That compares with less than $400 extra in Indiana, Oregon, New York and Washington state.
People in more-sparsely populated agricultural states tend to drive bigger cars over longer distances, meaning they spend more per capita on fuel and feel the pain from rising prices more acutely. These states also have a much higher per-capita diesel consumption. The fuel is used to power tractors, combines and heavy trucks.
Elizabeth Bush, a 28-year-old stay-at-home mother of two from the Bettendorf, Iowa, area, had never paid attention to the price of gas before last year. Now she considers filling her tank up halfway to save money. It is the same with groceries -- she weighs getting cheaper food, having never thought about it before.
"I never used to think about these things. And this year, it's something that's on my mind," she said.
These issues, and what she described as growing political divisiveness, weighed on Bush when she went to the polls on Tuesday and voted Democrat across the board. Bush, a registered Democrat, said she was open to Republican ideas, too, but felt that Democrats were better-positioned to help people in need.
Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek won an open Senate seat in Iowa, marking the sixth Democratic Senate pickup and clinching control of the chamber in the next Congress. Rob Sand won Iowa's race for governor, becoming the first Democrat elected to the state's top post in two decades.
Even many reliably Republican voters said they are unhappy about the economy.
Darin Gadd, a 59-year-old retiree from the military in Columbus, Ohio, backed Trump in 2020 and 2024. On Tuesday, he again voted Republican. But he is fed up with the president over high prices and the war in Iran, which has forced him to pay $130 to fill up his pickup.
"Two years and he hasn't done anything except for bad things," Gadd said, singling out tariffs for raising prices. Gadd works part time for his brother's construction company and blamed tariffs for raising the cost of many materials. "A sheet of plywood used to be $4.50, now it's $30-something," he said. "You can't build a house on that anymore."
Joseph Lavorgna, chief economist at SMBC Americas who worked on the National Economic Council during the first Trump administration, said voters were counting on Trump. "The president was there to fix it and he didn't," he said.
It isn't just that prices are rising at a faster pace: Pay is no longer keeping up.
"If your real income is shrinking, you're going to be anxious about a lot of things," said Lavorgna, who also served as a counselor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during Trump's second term. "That basically gets to the crux of it."
Housing is another pain for many voters. Mortgage rates are now above 7%, slightly higher than they were just before the 2024 election. That has put buying a home out of reach for many Americans. In September, pending home sales fell to a record low. Meanwhile, the immigration crackdown has made it harder to find construction workers, and tariffs have pushed up the cost of materials, weighing on home-building.
Ahead of the 2024 election, the Biden administration touted healthy economic growth, but voters were focused on inflation and punished Democrats. Pointing to slower price increases or solid GDP figures just doesn't assuage voters' frustration with higher prices. It is a lesson that Biden officials learned and one that Republicans are struggling with now.
"Back when we were in power, yes, we definitely talked past people by saying, 'Look over here at this strong GDP report,'" said Jared Bernstein, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Biden.
The problem for the Trump administration, he said, is that it has imposed new price shocks through tariffs and the Iran war. "I recognize the folly of trying to tell people they're better off than they think they are," Bernstein said, "but my sympathy is mitigated by how much inflationary policy they continue to pursue."
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