Amy Richards, a 56-year-old from Texas, told the Associated Press that she used to be a Republican but has voted Democratic since 2016. She said that the president “thinks that the economy is doing well because he and his family have enriched themselves to the tune of several billion dollars.… He has zero idea what it is like to receive a paycheck and have to feed yourself and your family … and he doesn’t care.”
It’s not a surprise that the economy is often top of mind for voters; it usually is. What’s new this year is that Republicans have lost their advantage on the issue. And while on the surface that’s about gas and grocery prices, there are deeper shifts happening that could help open the door to a new economic era.
For decades, voters have trusted the GOP to keep the gross domestic product growing based on one misleading idea: They know that the GOP is the party of business, so they just assume surely the pro-business party is better for the economy.
But voters are turning away from that, and the reason why could mark a seismic change in American politics: Now, they aren’t so sure that what’s good for businesses is good for them. They’re looking for candidates with not just answers but different kinds of answers than they’ve heard before. If Democrats win next Tuesday and actually deliver next year, it could usher in a new era of policy that finally closes the door on the neoliberalism that has dominated for nearly half a century.
The idea that what’s good for the private sector is good for working people has deep roots in the GOP, but in our time, it comes from Ronald Reagan, whose economic policies pointed to government spending as the cause of inflation, claiming it crowded out innovation and cost workers jobs and opportunities. He slashed the federal government’s spending and said he would focus welfare programs on only “the truly needy,” the definition of which was always shrinking. He promised that public revenue would grow even as the tax rates that individuals paid fell, because of overall growth in the economy. “Our aim is to increase our national wealth so all will have more, not just redistribute what we already have, which is just a sharing of scarcity,” Reagan said soon after being elected in 1981. “We can begin to reward hard work and risk-taking, by forcing this government to live within its means.”
Reagan never called it “trickle-down economics,” but of course that’s what it became known as. Despite being disproven as a theory of economics, parts of these ideas have fundamentally stuck. Many voters still think the government causes inflation and is massively inefficient compared to the venerated private sector. They voted for Donald Trump because they believed he was a businessman who could turn things around.
Today, as corporations continue to rake in record-high profits and billionaires are sending rockets to the moon, the idea that working people’s fates are tied to theirs is less sellable. Voters appear to be ready to turn back to the kinds of economic policies that FDR enacted, in which the government actually makes life better for workers across the income scale. They’re increasingly willing to tax the wealthy in order to do it and are listening to Democratic candidates who promise a renewed sense of government responsibility to provide.
And they’re fighting the old attacks that used to sink those ideas, like claims from the right that robust government spending equals socialism and communism. “The only minority destroying America is the billionaires,” Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico said at a rally last year.
He then defended other minorities attacked by Republicans: trans people, Muslims, and undocumented immigrants, who he estimated to each be around 1 percent of the population. “We are focused on the wrong one percent,” he said, to cheers from the crowd. “Trans people aren’t taking away our health care. Muslims aren’t defunding our schools. Immigrants aren’t cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends. It’s the billionaires and their puppet politicians.”
In recent swing-state surveys, the progressive Democratic messaging group Way to Win, a “strategic donor collaborative and strategy hub,” found that voters were more convinced by messages that promised a government that works for people. Those that included statements like “Our leaders should be fighting to make all of our lives better” and “We need leaders willing to stand up to right-wing corporate interests that hold influence in both political parties” were popular. The people surveyed also blamed things like no-bid contracts and corporate price-gouging for the sad state of the economy.
Medicare for All, which is a big campaign promise in key battleground races like Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate race in Michigan, is also more popular with voters than ever, with two-thirds of American adults telling KFF they supported a national health plan, although it’s still unpopular with Republicans. The idea was so unpopular under President Barack Obama that any notion of even a public option was jettisoned from the Affordable Care Act. Now, more than a decade later, consumers still can’t afford their premiums, and they increasingly blame the health care industry for making medical care unaffordable. They are looking for new answers to America’s health care problem.
Support for the government helping families pay for childcare costs has also grown, especially among young voters. Nearly 60 percent of Gen Z voters said the government should subsidize childcare for families with two working parents in an October poll by The 19th/YouGov, and 29 percent of women in that age group said the government should fully cover childcare for children under the age of two. Thirty percent of voters aged 30 to 44, the most likely group of adults to be paying for childcare right now, supported a universal program.
It’s easy to point to Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran as the reasons people are upset about high prices at the gas station and in the grocery store. But populist framing has been adopted by some Democratic candidates who don’t even count themselves as socialist, and it has increased the ire directed at billionaires, helping to promote the idea of taxing them more and changing the conversation about class in America.
The midterm campaigns may also be changing the way that voters view economic questions in the first place. A CBS News/YouGov poll from August found that 60 percent of all U.S. adults think the economy is somewhat or very unfair. Eighty-three percent of Democrats in the survey said it was most important for Democrats “to show they are fighting for people,” and 68 percent said they should be talking about “big or fundamental changes in policies and approach, even if they are harder to do,” on economic issues.
In sum, people are furious at corporations, and they no longer see their well-being tied to what boardrooms want. That creates a new opportunity to tell a story about the role the government can play in making the economy fair and providing the basics—like housing and health care—that people need for a good life. The key is that Democrats can’t just win on that message. They’ll actually have to deliver next year. But if they do, 2026 could stand as one of the most consequential midterm elections in modern history: the year when voters stopped buying the argument that what’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street.
