Story Highlights
- 77 percent of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say Trump’s policies have raised the cost of living in their community
- Trump’s economic approval stands at 30 percent, a personal career low, with only 32 percent saying his policies have improved economic conditions
- Democrats now hold a 9-point advantage over Republicans on trust to handle the cost of living, a dramatic reversal from the GOP’s historic advantage on economic issues
What Happened
The CNN poll, conducted by SSRS from April 30 to May 4 among a random national sample of 1,499 American adults, finds the United States in a state of deep and broadly shared economic anxiety. Two-thirds of respondents say Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions across the country, while just 32 percent say those policies have made an improvement. The president’s approval rating on the economy stands at 30 percent — a figure that, as CNN noted, represents a career low for Trump, worse than any reading during his first term or the early months of his second.
The cross-partisan nature of the economic discontent is particularly striking. While Republican voters remain broadly supportive of Trump overall, a majority say his policies have increased the cost of living in their own communities — a finding that reflects the tangible, unavoidable impact of $4.52-per-gallon gasoline and elevated grocery prices on everyday American life regardless of partisan identity. Among Republicans under the age of 45, the level of economic dissatisfaction is even higher than the national average.
The poll asked respondents to name the most important issue facing the country. Fifty-five percent chose the economy and the cost of living, more than double the share naming any other single issue. In an open-ended question about the top economic problem facing their own family, concerns about food and gas prices dominated, with the share of Americans specifically naming gas prices rising from 5 percent a year ago to 23 percent today. One Republican respondent quoted in the CNN report wrote: “Prices! Everything is so expensive. Makes it very difficult to do anything other than work and go home. Between gas and grocery prices, we are poor!”
The poll’s findings on partisan trust reveal a significant and politically consequential shift. During the Biden era, Republicans held a consistent and often decisive advantage on economic trust. In one 2022 CNN survey, Americans said by a 15-point margin that the Republican Party’s economic views were closer to their own. The new poll finds Democrats ahead by 9 points on trust to handle the cost of living — a 24-point swing that reflects the direct political consequence of the Iran war’s energy price shock and the broader perception that Trump’s economic priorities are misaligned with working-class concerns.
Why It Matters
The political implications of these findings for the 2026 midterms cannot be overstated. Midterm elections are typically structured around a simple question: is the country heading in the right or wrong direction? When nearly 70 percent of Americans say Trump’s policies have worsened the economy, and 64 percent say he has not done enough to reduce everyday prices — including half of Republicans — the structural environment for Republicans in competitive congressional districts is extraordinarily difficult.
The poll also contains a deeply troubling personal-character metric for the president. Only one-third of Americans now say they believe Trump cares about people like them, down from 40 percent in March 2026 and the lowest reading of his political career. Only 37 percent say Trump puts the country’s interests above his own personal gain, and just 32 percent say he is in touch with the problems ordinary Americans face daily. These numbers, which combine economic dissatisfaction with questions of character and empathy, mirror the dynamics that historically predict significant congressional seat losses for the president’s party in midterm elections.
The nearly universal pessimism about the economy also reflects a five-year accumulation of consumer price stress that has not been resolved despite improvements in underlying economic fundamentals such as employment and GDP growth. Americans adjusted to higher prices during the post-pandemic inflation surge, but many have not fully recovered financially, and the Iran war’s energy price spike has reopened wounds that had only partially healed. The share of Americans saying gas prices are straining their budgets has reached 8 in 10 nationally, according to separate NPR/PBS News/Marist polling conducted in early May.
Economic and Global Context
The economic picture underlying the poll’s findings is one of genuine structural stress. Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has injected a severe, externally driven supply shock into an American economy that was already dealing with elevated base prices from the post-pandemic inflation cycle. The Federal Reserve, which had been cautiously reducing interest rates ahead of the war, now faces a dilemma: the war-induced energy price spike is pushing inflation higher, limiting the central bank’s ability to cut rates and provide the consumer relief that lower borrowing costs would produce.
The NPR/PBS News/Marist poll from May 6 found that 44 percent of Americans consider their local cost of living not very affordable, with an additional 12 percent describing it as not affordable at all. A separate survey by the Economist and YouGov found only 25 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s handling of inflation and prices — strikingly close to the CNN figure of 30 percent. Across methodologically diverse polling aggregators, the direction of travel is consistent: economic dissatisfaction is deepening, not stabilizing.
Almost 7 in 10 Americans believe a recession is likely within the next year, according to the CNN/SSRS data — a level of economic pessimism that, if sustained through November, would represent severe headwinds for every Republican candidate seeking federal office. The wealth gap between upper-income households and working families has widened significantly, with higher-income Americans better insulated from gas price spikes and inflation, while lower and middle-income households bear a disproportionate share of the pain.
Implications
For Republican candidates running in competitive House and Senate districts, the poll’s findings define the central challenge of the 2026 cycle: how to distance themselves from an economic environment their own constituents blame on the president’s policies without generating a damaging break with Trump that costs them primary support. The challenge is made especially acute by the fact that most vulnerable Republicans in swing districts represent working-class constituencies that are among the most directly affected by high gas prices.
For the Trump White House, the gas tax suspension proposal — whatever its substantive limitations — is clearly designed to provide a visible response to the polling. Any legislative victory on energy costs, however modest in real-world impact, would allow Republicans to argue they acted while Democrats obstructed. The political calculus of the proposal is arguably more important than its economic one.
Democratic strategists view the poll’s findings as a significant opportunity, but caution is warranted. The CNN data shows that 74 percent of Americans also believe Democrats in Congress have the wrong priorities — a finding that suggests voters are not simply rallying to the Democratic alternative but are expressing broad frustration with the entire political system. Democrats who run solely on anti-Trump economic messaging without offering a credible alternative agenda may find the gains they expect to be smaller than the topline numbers suggest.
The midterm elections are now six months away, and the trajectory of gas prices between now and November will likely determine whether the Republican majority in both chambers survives. A ceasefire agreement that reopens the Strait of Hormuz and allows gas prices to fall significantly would be the single most consequential political development possible for Trump and his party. Without it, the economic data suggests November 2026 could deliver the kind of wave election that reshapes American governance for years to come.
Sources
“Americans’ anger about the economy hits Trump and Republicans’ midterm prospects”
