The Cost of Living Crisis Is Trump's Midterm Reckoning

Only 17% of American adults approve of President Trump's handling of the cost of living, according to a new national survey by the Associated Press — and that single number should terrify the party in power. The cost of living crisis is no longer an argument to be won on cable news. It is the defining experience of 2026, felt at the gas pump, the grocery checkout, and in the rent payment that clears before the paycheck has recovered. For a generation told that hard work pays off, affordability is not one issue among many. It is the whole story.

The cost of living crisis in numbers

The broader economic numbers are hardly kinder. Just 26% of adults approve of Trump's handling of the economy overall, a new low in the survey's tracking, Barchart's summary of the poll reports.

The trend line is the killer. His economic approval has fallen 14 percentage points since he began his second term in March 2025 — a slide with no obvious floor, and the kind of erosion that usually signals a midterm wipeout rather than a midcourse correction.

Blame is where the partisan armor fails. Nearly two-thirds of adults say Trump's own policies are doing more to keep costs high than factors outside his control. That is not the usual fog of economic discontent. It is a verdict, delivered by people who can name the policies — the aggressive tariffs, the war with Iran — and connect them to the prices they pay.

Compare that to the last time a president drowned in inflation. In October 2022, only 44% of Americans blamed President Biden's policies for rising prices, while 55% blamed forces beyond his control. Trump gets no such benefit of the doubt: a full 65% point the finger directly at his policies.

Daily life tells the same story in sharper relief. About half of adults are now extremely or very concerned about being able to afford gas, up from 39% in July 2026, and a similar share say the same about affording groceries.

The disappointment is personal, too. Roughly 7 in 10 adults say Trump's handling of the cost of living has been worse than they expected — including about half of Republicans.

Among Republicans, the erosion is measurable. About 6 in 10 now disapprove of his cost-of-living record, up from roughly half in April 2026.

The war with Iran and the tariff regime are dragging the numbers down with them. Nearly seven in ten Americans say the Iran war has not been worth fighting, up from about two-thirds in July 2026. Only 28% approve of his handling of Iran.

On trade, approval has cratered to fewer than a third of adults, down from roughly 4 in 10 in March 2026. Meanwhile, 64% say the president has gone too far with tariffs — a jump from 58% in January 2026.

The voters who put him there are saying it out loud

This is the part the spin doctors cannot fix: the anger is coming from inside the tent. Robert Gault, 66, a retired factory worker from Bradford, Pennsylvania, who votes Republican, told AP reporters he had expected better. "I was hoping it would be better or different, but it's not really good," he said.

Bethany Lnenicka, 41, runs a small farm in Fairfax, Iowa, and voted for Trump three times. She is not a critic from the other side; she is the base. "Groceries are just like kind of out of control," she said, adding that "your income doesn't go up" while prices do. That sentence — wages flat, costs climbing — is the entire generational economy in nine words.

Pedro Sanchez, 52, of Perris, California, works in law enforcement and voted for Trump. He calls current prices "extremely exorbitant," and puts it plainly: "Just the cost of everything is going up as a result of fuel."

Kristen Slaven, 41, a mental health therapist in Gluckstadt, Mississippi, who typically votes Republican, aimed her frustration at the administration's priorities. "Our focus on renaming bodies of water and pieces of land, that's just stupid to me when people can't feed their family," she said.

To be fair, the counterpoint exists. Fred Naumann, 51, a longtime Trump supporter in Green Bay, Wisconsin, backs both the tariffs and the Iran war. "I think inflation is a very difficult thing to tackle," he said. And most Republicans — 67% — still blame factors outside Trump's control rather than his policies. Border security remains his relative strength, with about half of adults approving of his handling of it.

November is the bill coming due

The survey behind these numbers is solid: 2,140 adults interviewed in late September 2026 through NORC's AmeriSpeak panel, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. This is not an outlier. It is a consensus.

And the calendar makes it a crisis. The midterm elections are weeks away, and Trump has explicitly asked voters to pretend he is on the ballot. Only about 3 in 10 adults approve of his job as president overall, and roughly 6 in 10 say the country is worse off than when his second term began.

The hot take, stripped of spin, is this: when voters who pulled the lever for you three times say groceries are out of control, the cost of living crisis has moved past partisan framing and become the defining generational experience. Housing, groceries, gas, wages that never keep up — this is the economy young Americans are inheriting, and they are not grading on a curve.

Presidents do not survive their own voters saying the numbers are real. November 2026 will be the receipt.

Also on GenZ NewZ: The 'Entitled Gen Z Workers' Myth Is Finally Dead — plus more in Hot Takes.