News Article

In our last message from the field, we told you that the Trump coalition is fracturing in the battleground states and districts of the 2026 election. So the next question is: Why?

What we heard from voters at the start of this year reminded us a lot of what we heard from voters at a similar time in 2024. Back then, voters key to the Democratic majority said they didn’t feel the benefits of Joe Biden’s economy. Now it’s Trump’s management of the economy, and rising prices in particular, that are driving voter anxiety.

We spoke to thousands of voters in battleground congressional districts and states for our Front Porch Focus Group and concern over “rising costs” surged from last year to become the single top issue for voters this year, by a wide margin. 

This was true across party.

So who are these voters and what do they mean when they talk about “rising costs?” Many voters named food and housing as top concerns. But another surprisingly frequent worry across nearly all demographics was medical debt, which emerged in our data as a bipartisan issue and a powerful predicting variable for voters’ views on other issues.

Almost 30 percent of voters said that medical bills were one of their biggest daily challenges, and that was consistent across every income level.

We also asked voters if they had ever had medical bills sent to a collection agency. Nearly 1 in 4 said they had, and partisan affiliation made little difference.

Opinion of the economy traditionally aligns with a voter’s partisanship: if a Republican is president, then Republican voters tend to be positive on the economy and vice versa. But voters’ lived experience of the economy can influence those reflexive partisan opinions.  Voters who had faced high levels of medical debt had a very different outlook on the country. They were more pessimistic about the economy and social safety net, and less approving of the president.

People with medical debt vs. everyone else:

• Level of concern about the economy (1 to 10 scale): average of 1.7 points higher
• Percent worried about cuts to social safety net: 14 percentage points higher
• Percent who have seen impacts of cuts to Social Security staff: 12 percentage points higher
• Net approval of President Trump: 12 percentage points lower (among 2024 Trump voters)

Incumbent Republican lawmakers face a liability here. Medical debt is already a bigger problem in Republican-led states, and Republicans have made it worse. They slashed Medicaid in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” and the Trump Administration effectively rolled back consumer credit protections for families facing medical debt. 

And even though Medicaid cuts don’t kick in fully until 2027, communities are seeing the impacts right now in a wave of hospital closings, both urban and rural.

Nor are these the only such Republican policy choices proving unpopular. The social safety net, long maligned by the conservative movement and now under attack, has surprisingly high levels of bipartisan appeal.

We’ll be bringing you some of those findings in our next Message from the Field. You can also click the button below to read the full Front Porch Focus Group: “Trump 2.0: Americans Aren’t Buying It (Mostly Because They Can’t Afford it).”

Until then…

… See you on the doors, 

Matt