From an economist’s point of view, conditions heading into the off-year elections probably didn’t seem so bad on paper. Inflation crept up but wasn’t spiking. Hiring was low but so was firing. Wages were still climbing, and the stock market was making investors feel wealthier.
But voters who showed up to the polls on Tuesday had a different point of view and delivered stinging defeats to Republicans.
“It’s a wake-up call,” polling expert Frank Luntz told MSNBC on Wednesday about the election results. “It’s a wake-up call to Democrats and Republicans. And it’s not the economy. It’s not even inflation because that’s something that’s used by professors and politicians. It is affordability.”
In particular, he pointed to housing and healthcare prices for the upper middle class, while workers who live paycheck to paycheck are focused on food and fuel prices.
In a separate interview with CNN on Wednesday, Luntz also downplayed inflation as an election issue and drew a distinction with affordability.
“The public is voting for candidates that they think will make life more affordable,” he said.
Indeed, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the race to be mayor of New York City with promises to make housing, groceries and transportation more affordable.
Moderate Democrats won gubernatorial races with similar messages too. Virginia governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, for example, targeted rising electricity prices, which have stirred discontent as the state’s AI data center boom has spiked demand for power.
To be sure, inflation has cooled substantially since topping 9% in June 2022. But President Donald Trump’s tariffs have kept it sticky, with the consumer price index ticking back up to 3% in September.
And while overall inflation hasn’t jumped sharply and consistently comes in below Wall Street forecasts, consumers are noticing higher prices at the grocery store for basics like coffee.
“It explains why Trump…