Conventional wisdom says that this most recent election—in which Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, Mikie Sherrill was elected governor of New Jersey, and Abigail Spanberger was elected governor of Virginia—was an affordability election. "Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia were built on promises to address the sky-high cost of living in those states while blaming Mr. Trump and his allies for all that ails those places," writes Shane Goldmacher for The New York Times. "What unified the three victories was the Democratic candidates' ability to turn the affordability curse against the sitting president, transforming Republicans' 2024 advantage into a 2025 albatross," writes Derek Thompson for The Atlantic.
During the Biden years, voters routinely expressed their discontent at sky-high inflation, which hit a 9.1 percent year-over-year high in June 2022. It mostly recovered (due, in part, to aggressive action by the Fed), but the cumulative effect has made plenty of categories of goods extra expensive compared to what people had expected them to cost in recent memory. Then you add on President Donald Trump's tariffs—the effects of which have not yet fully been felt—and couple it with persistently high housing costs (for both renting and owning), and it's no wonder voters will pull the lever for the people who promise to take such issues seriously.
