As Americans head into the final weekend before the midterm elections on November 3, one issue towers above the rest: the cost of living. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 84 percent of voters who had already cast early ballots named the economy as their biggest concern in this election cycle. That striking figure, reported on October 30, 2026, captures a mood that candidates in both parties have felt on the campaign trail for months — that everyday prices, from fuel to food to medicine, are squeezing households in ways that abstract economic statistics do not capture.
The numbers behind that anxiety are stark. The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States stood at $4.23 on October 29, according to reporting of official figures, about 39 percent more than a year earlier. Gasoline prices rose 9.1 percent in September alone. Fuel costs have climbed around the world since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran in February, pushing oil prices above $100 a barrel, up from below $70 before the conflict began. For families who drive to work, school and medical appointments, the increase is not a distant headline but a weekly bill that keeps growing.
In Florida, where most residents depend on cars to get around, the pressure is especially visible. A 43-year-old health care worker filling his tank in Fort Lauderdale told Agence France-Presse that the rises felt relentless, touching food, transport and fuel alike. A 63-year-old attorney who had just voted early said the higher costs reached into every corner of life, from trucking and shipping to air travel, noting that his tickets home for Christmas had doubled since last year. Their accounts echo a broader pattern in the reporting: voters do not talk about inflation as a single number, but as a pile-up of larger bills arriving at the same time.
Fuel, food and the bills that keep growing
The pump price is only the most visible part of the squeeze. When fuel becomes more expensive, the cost of moving goods rises too, and those costs tend to filter through to shop shelves, delivery charges and services. The price of services such as shipping, hotel rooms and utilities climbed rapidly from August to September, a sign, economists say, that inflation is spreading rather than fading. Consumer prices rose 3.6 percent in September compared with a year earlier, up from 3.4 percent in August, while after-tax incomes adjusted for inflation slipped from August to September and were only about 1 percent higher than a year before. In other words, many households are paying more while their real spending power barely moves.
That gap between pay and prices is where the election argument lives. Some voters describe cutting back in ways that go beyond switching brands or skipping luxuries. The Fort Lauderdale health care worker said he was cutting back on certain medicines because he could no longer afford them, and did not know what to do next. A 49-year-old social worker pointed to rising car and home insurance costs as another weight on her budget. For households already close to the edge, there is no painless item left to trim, and each new increase forces a harder choice between essentials. USN has previously examined how election policies can change profit and loss for households.
Housing adds another layer. The national median home price has risen further over the past year, deepening affordability worries in closely contested states, while rents and insurance premiums have also climbed. Health care costs remain among voters’ chief concerns, particularly in rural states such as Kansas, where access to care and the price of treatment weigh heavily. When voters say the economy is their top concern, they are usually describing this whole bundle at once: the tank, the shopping basket, the rent or mortgage, the insurance bill and the pharmacy counter.
The ALICE line: nearly 41 percent below the threshold
One measure that helps explain why the pressure feels so widespread comes from United Way. Its ALICE metric — short for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — counts working people whose earnings do not cover basic expenses such as food, housing and health care. Nearly 41 percent of the country’s 132 million households fall below that threshold, according to the organisation’s data, which works out to roughly 54 million households. These are not people out of work; they are employed, yet still unable to afford the basics.
The head of United Way Miami told AFP that financial hardship is creeping upward in America, particularly among the middle class, and urged policymakers to pay close attention to the data. The point matters because the ALICE figures challenge a simple story in which hardship affects only the poorest. When two-fifths of households cannot cover essentials from their earnings, price rises hit a very large share of the electorate, including many voters who consider themselves middle class and who may have felt financially secure only a few years ago. That breadth helps explain why cost-of-living concerns cut across party lines and regions, from car-dependent suburbs in Florida to farming communities in the Midwest.
The measure also highlights why voters can feel worse off even when headline economic growth looks strong. A growing economy does not automatically translate into affordable groceries or cheaper insurance, and if wages rise more slowly than the cost of essentials, households fall behind even as national output expands. For campaign strategists, that disconnect is the central puzzle of this election: how to talk about an economy that looks resilient in aggregate while millions of families feel squeezed at home.
Two competing explanations for the squeeze
The White House, for its part, insists that President Donald Trump’s policies are revitalising the American economy and making life more affordable for ordinary people. That argument rests on the administration’s broader economic programme, including its trade and energy policies, which supporters say will strengthen domestic production and bring prices down over time. The administration’s allies argue that short-term price pressures, including those linked to global conflict, should not obscure longer-term gains, and that voters will ultimately judge the economy on jobs, wages and American strength rather than on a single month’s fuel price.
Critics offer a very different explanation. William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told AFP that two of the president’s own decisions have directly added to cost pressures: launching the war against Iran and imposing sweeping tariffs on trading partners. In Galston’s view, both levers sit within the president’s power to reverse, since tariffs can be lifted and the conflict can be ended by the government that began it. Other voters go further, saying their ballots were already cast on the basis of how they feel the government has handled the stewardship voters entrusted to it.
The debate also reaches back to the last presidential election. Trump won re-election in 2024 in part on a promise to lower prices, which had also risen during the term of his predecessor, Joe Biden. He campaigned on bringing down the cost of living, including bringing gasoline below $2 a gallon. For some voters, that promise now feels broken. The social worker interviewed in Florida said she had not believed the promise at the time and was unlikely to believe it now, though she added that much more would have to change before prices could fall. For others, the judgment is already made, and the final weekend of campaigning is unlikely to change it.
Why household budgets may decide the midterms
Polls suggest that rising inflation has soured most voters on the economy and left many giving the president poor marks for his handling of prices. That sentiment matters enormously in a midterm election, when turnout is lower than in a presidential year and motivated voters carry extra weight. The November 3 elections will decide all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, around a third of Senate seats, 36 governorships and thousands of local offices. Control of Congress, and with it the fate of the administration’s legislative agenda, hangs on how voters in a few dozen competitive districts judge their own finances.
The Federal Reserve’s own balancing act forms part of the backdrop. The central bank has held interest rates steady in recent months while warning that inflation remains too high, a stance that keeps borrowing costs elevated for mortgages, car loans and credit cards even as it aims to cool price rises. USN has previously reported on the Fed holding rates at 3.75 to 4.00 percent as inflation concerns persisted. For households, that means the cost of borrowing stays high at the same time as everyday prices climb, a double squeeze that neither the White House nor its critics can wish away.
What happens in the final days may still matter at the margins. Campaigns will spend the weekend making their closing arguments in swing districts, and both sides know that the voters most likely to decide the outcome are often those feeling the squeeze most sharply. Whether they blame global conflict, tariffs, corporate pricing or government policy will shape not only who wins on November 3, but also what economic agenda the winners claim as a mandate. For now, the clearest signal from the early vote is that Americans are not voting on the economy in the abstract. They are voting on the price at the pump, the total at the checkout and the bills waiting at home.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Arab News, Associated Press and Kuwait Times.