Republicans don’t think their party is focused enough on their biggest issue.
The economy — and specifically the cost of living — is far and away voters’ top concern, and new results from The POLITICO Poll reveal a warning sign for the GOP just hours before polls close: There’s a stark disconnect between what Republican midterm voters want their party to focus on and what they say the party actually is focusing on.
Nearly half of Americans — 47% — say cost of living and affordability are among the issues that matter most when they are deciding how to vote. That includes a 44% plurality of Republican midterm voters and 54% of Democratic midterm voters. The economy and jobs ranked second.
But when asked which issues matter most to their party, a 39% plurality of Republican voters cited immigration and deportations as a top priority for the GOP. Just 23% said the party’s top priority was cost of living and affordability — a 21-point gap from the share who said it was a top voting concern.
Nearly two-thirds of Republican voters also say they want to hear more about the economy and cost of living from their party.
It’s a clear signal that voters wanted the GOP to stay focused on affordability, even as some Republicans and President Donald Trump continued to lean into culture war attacks — from transgender athletes in women’s sports to calling Texas’ Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico “tofu Talarico.”
In recent speeches, Trump has often prioritized other topics — including cultural issues, the Reflecting Pool and, yes, GOP candidates’ rear ends — over the economy.
If Democrats win the midterms, “you will have a 1929 style economic depression,” Trump told a crowd in Daytona Beach, Florida this Friday. He added immediately after: “Because when you hear men in women’s sports, when you hear transgender, when you hear about — you know, open borders and all — everything they have is crazy.”
Meanwhile, there isn’t the same dissonance on Democrats’ side: A plurality of Democratic voters pointed to cost of living and affordability as a top priority for their party, the poll found.
The findings expose a potential messaging vulnerability for Republicans heading into Election Day: Even among voters planning to support the party, there is a perception that GOP leaders are not devoting enough attention to the cost of living concerns weighing most heavily on Americans. Trump’s own agenda — his tariffs and his decision to involve the U.S. in a war with Iran — has roiled the country and key races that could determine balance of power in Congress.
“Well, I don’t think it’s good for Republicans,” Republican strategist Jeff Burton said of the poll results. “But it makes sense, because most of the Republicans’ campaign message hasn’t evolved around that and what affordability and cost of living really is. And it’s hard to tout it when every street corner has gas prices $2 or more than they were just a few months ago.”
The survey, conducted by PF Global the weekend before the election, underscores the messaging challenge that has dogged Republican candidates throughout the cycle.
Candidates in races up and down the ballot have zeroed in on economic talking points: Campaigns and outside groups have spent more than $800 million on ads focusing on affordability, including roughly $401 million from Democratic-aligned groups and $311 million from Republican-aligned groups, according to a POLITICO analysis of primarily TV ad data from the tracking firm AdImpact.
Still, the GOP has struggled to effectively convince voters that it is doing enough to fix an issue voters also hold them responsible for.
Some Republican strategists think that disconnect comes down to one person: Trump.
“I mean, look at what he’s doing today,” said longtime Arizona Republican strategist Chuck Coughlin on the eve of the election. ”He’s going in front of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. He’s drawing attention back to his monument exhibition.”
“It’s phenomenal how off message he is, and how that has burdened the party with his narrative, which doesn’t come close to talking about what Americans care about,” Coughlin continued. “I mean, he’s pretty much said time and time again, he doesn’t care. You know, he thinks affordability is a hoax.”
At the end of last week, Trump made three campaign stops in Florida, South Carolina and Ohio. Across all of those speeches, he spent just over 10% of his time talking about the economy and the cost of living, according to a POLITICO analysis.
That’s significantly less than the amount of time he spent talking about culture war issues and other topics unrelated to the affordability crisis. He spent more minutes advocating for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to resign and zeroing in on the Dan Sullivan ballot controversy in Alaska than he did talking about prices and inflation, for example.
Guns, transgender issues, and renaming landmarks took up more of his focus than taxes, tariffs, and drug prices combined.
“President Trump has delivered on his promise to provide relief to hardworking families, securing more than $82 billion in individual tax relief from No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, the Enhanced Senior Deduction, and No Tax on Car Loan Interest,” White House spokesperson Matthew Middleton said in a statement.
RNC spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said “Democrats’ far-left policies will decimate” Republicans’ progress and that Trump “has criss crossed the nation to drive voters to the polls to support our Republican candidates who will build on these achievements over the next two years.”
The POLITICO Poll suggests there is relatively little appetite among Republican midterm voters for more discussion of some of the cultural issues that have featured prominently in Trump’s political messaging.
Just 10% of Republican midterm voters said they want to hear more about “wokeness and DEI” from the party, when asked to select two issues from a list of options. And only 6% of Republican midterm voters and 5% of Democratic midterm voters identified race, DEI and “wokeness” as among their top voting concerns.
By contrast, 64% of Republican midterm voters said they want to hear more about the economy and cost of living and 42% said the same about immigration and border security.
The results also underscore just how thoroughly the economy has dominated this election cycle, relegating issues that played prominent roles in past elections — including abortion rights and transgender issues — to the sidelines.
“If Republican voters actually feel that their number one issue isn’t being addressed, then that is definitely going to affect turnout,” said Burton, the GOP strategist. “And the worry could be that, ‘okay, they turn out, but do they actually vote Democrat or split their ticket?’”
