Voters are connecting the dots — and it’s bad news for Republicans

Presidents always suffer from proximity when Americans are discontented about the economy. But this year, Trump faces an additional level of vulnerability. A significant majority of voters consistently say in polls that they believe his policies — particularly surrounding tariffs and the Iran war — are exacerbating the problem that most concerns them: the high cost of living.

“It’s not just the underlying economy and (being) in a bad cycle,” says former GOP Rep. Tom Davis, who while in office served as the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. With tariffs and the war’s impact on gas prices, he says, “you’ve got two specific presidential actions” that most voters believe are intensifying the squeeze on their living standards.

That would be ominous enough for congressional Republicans. But their vulnerability is magnified because House and Senate Republicans have repeatedly voted, almost in unison, to support Trump’s policies on Iran and the war, as well as the cuts in federal medical spending that Democrats argue have contributed to higher health care costs.

In effect, at a moment when most Americans believe Trump’s agenda is deepening their financial distress, the congressional GOP has also left its fingerprints at the scene of the offense.

In the campaign’s final weeks, tightening that connection for voters has become the central theme of Democratic messaging. A new CNN analysis of AdImpact data shows that Democratic candidates are spending huge sums on ads targeting the Trump policies on tariffs, the war and on Medicaid spending that virtually all congressional Republicans voted to support.

Tying Republicans to those policies has become “the heart and soul of Democratic campaigns against Republicans incumbents,” says veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. “And the hard fact of the voting record makes it harder for Republican incumbents to slip the punch.” Even GOP challengers, Garin adds, are finding it difficult to distance themselves from these unpopular choices because so many of them “have expressed support for Trump policies even if they were not in office to actually vote for them.”

Voters returned Trump to office above all because they believed he could relieve the squeeze in their living standards. But nearly two years later, polls show that most Americans have reached the unequivocal conclusion that his agenda has instead magnified the problem they elected him to solve.

In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, conducted last month by a bipartisan team of pollsters, 60% of registered voters said Trump’s policies have made the economy worse — more than double the 25% that said his actions have improved conditions. In the most recent AP/NORC poll, when asked why prices are “higher than usual,” 67% of voters blamed “Trump’s policies,” far more than the 32% that pointed to “factors outside Trump’s control.”

CNN/SSRS surveys released last week similarly found that likely voters in Ohio agreed, by an overwhelming 76% to 7% margin, that Trump’s policies have increased their costs rather than decreased them. In Iowa, likely voters agreed by 74% to 6%.

These conclusions draw extensive agreement even among groups that have provided the pillars of Trump’s electoral coalition. In the AP/NORC survey, most working-class white voters said prices are high because of Trump’s policies, not factors he couldn’t control. About half of self-identified Republican likely voters in Ohio and Iowa agreed Trump’s policies are increasing the cost of living, the CNN surveys found.

Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster, said the breadth of this negative verdict is unprecedented across her career in politics. “It is the broadest sense we’ve had that a president has failed,” she said. “It is broader than it was in 2018 for him, or even for George W. Bush in 2006.”

The direct link that most voters are drawing between higher costs and Trump’s policies would be dangerous for congressional Republicans in any circumstance. Attitudes toward the incumbent president have become a decisive factor in shaping the outcomes of midterm elections.

But congressional Republicans may be especially exposed because almost all of them have voted so often to uphold the specific policies that voters now blame for higher costs.

House Republicans have voted at least five times to support Trump’s tariff agenda. No more than six Republicans have ever supported the Democratic efforts to rescind Trump’s tariff authority. House Republicans have voted seven times to support the war, with no more than seven ever opposing Trump when a vote was called.

Birds fly above the dome of the US Capitol, on August 7. Nathan Howard/Reuters The story is similar among Senate Republicans. They have voted eight times to back Trump’s tariffs, with only a handful of Republicans ever opposing him, and they voted 14 times to back the war; on the first six votes, every Senate Republican apart from Kentucky’s Rand Paul voted to support the war.

Republicans in both chambers were comparably united behind final passage of the reconciliation bill in 2025 that coupled large cuts in Medicaid and federal food assistance with sweeping tax cuts and a huge increase in federal funding for immigration.

These Republican votes — the GOP fingerprints on the Trump agenda — have become the centerpiece of the Democratic case. “This has never been an economic argument that Democrats have been able to make in the last several election cycles: that the Republican (legislator) objectively made your life more expensive,” says CJ Warnke, communications director for House Majority PAC, the principal super PAC supporting the party’s House candidates.

That argument now echoes through Democratic stump speeches and on the debate stage. At an Iowa Senate debate last week, for instance, Democratic nominee Josh Turek pressed Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate nominee, over that connection. She “has voted five times in favor of continuing these chaotic tariffs and seven times in favor of this war in Iran,” Turek said. “Both have hurt Iowa I believe more than any other state.”

Candidates for US Senate candidates Rep. Ashley Hinson and state Rep. Josh Turek take questions during a debate in Johnston, Iowa, on October 7. Cody Scanlan/The Des Moines Register/Pool/AP Republican votes for the war, the tariffs and the Medicaid cuts in the reconciliation bill are also the major chords in Democratic advertising. A CNN analysis of AdImpact data through the end of September found that Democratic candidates this year have spent $53.2 million on ads that mention tariffs, while Republicans have devoted less than $1 million to the subject. On Iran, Democrats have spent $51.1 million, compared with $2.2 million for Republicans. Democrats have spent the most on ads about health care, including more than 600 ads backed by $102 million that mention Medicaid. Republicans have devoted $22 million to ads mentioning Medicaid.

Often, Democratic ads have combined these votes to create a broader indictment. A House Majority PAC ad describes Colorado Rep. Gabe Evans as “Trump’s star student” because he voted “100%” for Trump’s tariffs, cuts in federal healthcare spending, and the Iran War. Democrats sometimes accuse Republicans of personally profiting from the Trump policies through stock trading, as challenger Paige Cognetti has done repeatedly against Rep. Rob Bresnahan in Northeast Pennsylvania.

In South Texas, Democratic House candidate Bobby Pulido has fused Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz’ votes for the war, tariffs and increased immigration funding into an especially powerful spot. “While we pay record high diesel and gas prices, and out of control grocery bills, and families in our community are terrorized, Monica de la Cruz is silent… because she voted for this,” Pulido, a Tejano singing star, says before promising to use his own voice to “fight for you.”

An ad backed by more than $2 million from a Democratic super PAC targeting Iowa’s Senate race puts another fine point on the message: “Ashley Hinson was supposed to look out for us, but she’s voted 7 times for the war in Iran. Fertilizer costs are out of control. Diesel’s at record highs. It’s never been harder to run a farm.”

Lake says the fact that Republicans voted so repeatedly to endorse these policies make these attacks particularly powerful. While voters may say, “I don’t know that much about policy, I don’t know what is in these bills,” they feel that legislators are “ignoring us” because “time after time, after we’ve told you we don’t want it, (they) keep doing it,” Lake says.

Against this onslaught, Republicans have tried several responses.

In a few conspicuous cases, Republican candidates have broken with Trump. GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers in Michigan recently called for an end both to the war in Iran and the economic conflict with Canada. Hinson has also said the war needs to end because Iowans “shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line.” Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar spoke directly to the camera in a dramatic ad that declared Hispanics “feel betrayed” because some of Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts “have gone too far.”

Mike Rogers arrives to speak to the press after taking part in a debate with Abdul El-Sayed in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on October 8. Jim Vondruska/Reuters In another sign of GOP trepidation, since the kickoff of general elections around the country after Labor Day, Republican advertisers have spent just $13 million on ads that explicitly mention Trump — while Democrats have spent more than $125 million.

But the separation strategy creates several obvious risks. One is pushback from Trump: He responded to Salazar’s broadside by reposting a succession of social media posts condemning her. David Kochel, a GOP strategist working for a Super PAC supporting Hinson in Iowa, says that any Republican must carefully weigh the potential cost on turnout from Trump’s MAGA base from openly distancing too far from him. “It’s a really tough balance to strike,” Kochel says.

The bigger problem may be that after so many months of supporting Trump these criticisms may strike voters as insincere. Democrats, for instance, have responded to Rogers’ shifts on Iran, Canada and tariffs by highlighting his fulsome earlier praise of Trump on all those fronts.

Similarly, in last week’s first Maine Senate debate, Democratic nominee Troy Jackson mocked Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ claims of independence by arguing that she had dissented from Trump’s agenda only at the margins, while otherwise providing critical support. When Collins took credit for persuading Trump to exempt road salt from his Canadian tariffs, Jackson landed his best counterpunch of the night: “What about everything else?” he declared. “I mean, we can’t eat road salt.”

Faced with these challenges, most Republicans have responded by trying to change the subject to issues where Democrats remain vulnerable, especially in red states.

Attendees hold signs reading “Republicans are fixing Democrats’ mess” during the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, on September 10. Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News/Getty Images The CNN AdImpact analysis found that Republican candidates this year have spent $164 million on ads that mention the border, $151 million on ads mentioning immigration, and $66 million on ads mentioning crime. The party also $87 million on ads about transgender issues, a major point of emphasis since Trump successfully used it as a wedge issue against former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.

GOP ads accuse Democrats of supporting taxpayer benefits for undocumented immigrants and undermining Trump’s actions to regain control of the southern border, and reprise the “(Democrat) is for they/them” attacks on transgender issues that boosted Trump in 2024. And like the Democrats, Republicans sometimes combine these issues to portray a Democrat as ideologically incompatible with red-state voters.

More than anything, Republicans want to talk about taxes. The party spent more than $890 million on ads mentioning tax policy through the end of September, proudly touting the fulfillment of 2024 campaign promises to cut taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security, while delivering customary warnings about Democratic tax hikes.

“In just 18 months, I cut taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security so you can keep more of what you earn. I’ll fight every day to make life more affordable,” says a top ad from Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, facing one of the most competitive races in the country down the final stretch.

In effect, GOP candidates are trying to shift voters’ focus from what Trump and the Republican Congress have done in the past two years to what a Democratic Congress might do in the next two.

“I think that all these campaigns that are going to be successful are going to do so by making it a choice, not a referendum,” says Kochel. “Because there is no way to rehabilitate the Trump numbers in the time that we have left.”

For decades, parties struggling with the undertow of an unpopular president have insisted they can convince voters to treat the election as a choice, not just a referendum on the incumbent-and usually failed. The GOP may succeed somewhat more with that strategy than usual this year, because the map is so concentrated on red places where “the Democratic agenda is also very unpopular,” as Kochel puts it.

President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, on October 5. Alex Brandon/AP In last week’s CNN polling, for instance, 29% of the voters who said Trump’s agenda was raising prices still said they would vote Republican for Senate in Ohio, as did 31% in Iowa. Across many of the red states, Democratic candidates are also failing to win quite as many voters who disapprove of Trump as they did in exit polls during his first term, with the drop-off particularly noticeable in the white working class. Such residual, even if conflicted, partisan loyalty could allow the GOP to build a firewall that stops Democratic gains short of the reddest terrain.

But Dan Sena, who ran the Democratic congressional Campaign Committee during the party’s 2018 sweep, predicts that in more competitive places, Republicans won’t succeed in shifting the focus to Democrats. “The problem is because the Republican ownership of higher prices is so stuck to them, voters can’t get past that to listen to the other arguments they are making,” he says.

And, in fact, most often in contemporary politics, attitudes toward the president and current conditions have shaped midterm outcomes far more than assessments of the party out of power. Tom Davis, the former NRCC chair, says awareness of that connection helps explain why congressional Republicans voted so reliably for the Trump agenda. “I think they wanted to give their president latitude, and they felt rightly or wrongly that their future was tied to his,” Davis says. “The problem with that is when you get in a tough cycle it’s hard to differentiate yourself.”

That may be especially true this year. Whether Republicans flee Trump’s agenda or defend it in these final weeks, they have all left fingerprints behind in the rooms where it was forged.