Dem wins show Trump failures on economy, cost of living
Sweeping, double-digit Democratic victories in the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey and in other races beyond this week show the degree to which voters have lost confidence in President Trump and the GOP’s abilities to manage the economy and address rising food, energy, health care and housing costs.
Trump has shown himself to be particularly tone deaf and out of touch with the struggles of most Americans, showing off more (and more) gold filigree and tchotchkes adorning the Oval Office while levelling the White House East Wing to build a $200-$300 million, 90,000 square foot ballroom; posting photos of the expensively remodeled, white marbled Lincoln bathroom; and throwing a lavish “Great Gatsby”-themed Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago resort the day before SNAP food benefits were cut off for over 40 million Americans last week. And as always, endlessly lying, falsely claiming that grocery prices are down (they are up).
“Overall, only 34% of registered voters believe the Trump administration has lived up to expectations on the economy, while 63% say it has fallen short, an NBC News poll taken late last month shows,” NBC’s Peter Nicholas reports.
“In recent months, Trump has appeared focused on White House décor and ending foreign wars. …But his party’s political fate may hinge instead on pocketbook issues like the cost of groceries, gas and health insurance.”
“The Democrats’ sweeping victory on Tuesday may have made an impression on Trump and his GOP allies … On Wednesday, Trump posted on Truth Social that ‘affordability is our goal.’ That was the second time in two days he’d mentioned the word ‘affordability,’” but only the fourth time he’d done so in a post since he returned to office last January.
Crucially, it is not just Democratic voters who are blaming Trump for the poor economy.
The Democratic candidates who won the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey this week, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, flipped 7% of Trump voters, according to exit polls, the New York Times’ Nate Cohn reports:
On Tuesday, when Democrats won the Virginia and New Jersey governors’ races by wide margins, it wasn’t simply because more Democratic-leaning voters showed up to the polls while more Republican-leaning voters sat out. The Democratic candidates also succeeded at winning over a modest but meaningful sliver of President Trump’s supporters, based on exit polls and authoritative voter file records.
While it’s always challenging to nail down the details of an electoral shift, the available data generally suggests that Democratic gains were driven slightly more by flipping Trump’s supporters than by benefiting from a superior turnout…
Turnout alone didn’t explain the decisive victory—because Ms. Sherrill and Ms. Spanberger won by 13 and 15 points.
Instead the two Democrats won so decisively because they also flipped a crucial sliver of voters who said they supported Trump in 2024. Sherrill and Spanberger both won 7 percent of Trump’s supporters, according to the exit polls.
It may not seem like much to flip 7 percent of Trump’s backers, but consider: When a voter flip, it adds one voter to one party and also deducts one from the other, making it twice as significant as turning out a new voter.
Trump also appears to be hemorrhaging Hispanic support, Cohn reports:
The same story holds among Hispanic voters, who snapped back towards Democrats in both states. The exit polls in New Jersey found that Sherrill won a whopping 18% of Trump’s Hispanic support in the state…
Sherrill also seemed to benefit from a much stronger turnout among Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters. In the New Jersey exit poll, Hispanic voters who cast ballots in 2025 reported backing Harris by 25 points; in the actual 2024 election, Harris won Hispanic voters by just nine points, according to NYTimes estimtes.
Together, it was enough for Sherrill to win Hispanic voters by 37 points, according to the exit polls.
It’s the economy, stupid
Democratic victories on Tuesday “came after a drumbeat of polls showing that Trump and the Republican party have seen their longtime edge on management of the economy evaporate,” the New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher reports:
Trump’s own meandering focus on the economy has given plenty of fodder to Democrats. He tore down the East Wing for a new ballroom, lavishly remodeled the Lincoln bathroom, paved over the Rose Garden for a patio like the one at Mar-a-Lago and threw a “Great Gatsby”-esque Halloween party with the theme “a little party never killed nobody” during a government shutdown and on the eve of cuts to food assistance. …
Only 30 percent of voters believe Trump has lived up to their expectations for tackling inflation and the cost of living, according to a recent NBC News poll, his lowest mark for any issue asked. And a meager 27 percent of voters in a CNN poll in late October said Trump’s policies had improved the country’s economic conditions — less than half of those who thought he had made matters worse. …
Abigail Spanberger, a Democratic former congresswoman, flipped the governorship of Virginia with a campaign highlighting the fallout for the state’s economy from Trump’s efforts to dismantle parts of the federal government. Mikie Sherrill, a four-term congresswoman, won with a platform that prominently included a Day 1 promise to declare a state of emergency on utility costs and freeze rates.
Both won by double digits. …
Voters are unhappy about the economy and are starting to blame Republicans instead of Democrats.
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