“The cost of living is extremely high,” said Peris Morgan, a Michigan voter who spoke with NBC News outside a polling place in Sterling Heights on Monday. “Rent is high. Groceries are high, gas is high, everything is high, and so yeah, the cost of living compared to what people are being paid is not adding up.”
While higher diesel costs have raised the price of transporting everyday goods, many businesses have also passed another big new cost on to consumers in the past two years: tariffs.
Trump’s sweeping tariff regime has hit several of the states with major Senate races significantly harder than it has hit other states.
The nonprofit National Taxpayers Union Foundation ranks all 50 states by how much tariffs have cost their economies since 2025.
Three of the four states that pay the most for tariffs also have tight Senate races: Texas comes in second, Michigan third and Georgia is fourth. Further down the list, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and South Carolina are all among the top 15.
The lion’s share of these costs have come in the form of new import duties that affected the price of cars and trucks.
But across the country, tariffs will cost every household an additional $1,100 this year, on average, according to estimates from the Yale Budget Lab.
“This is not what we signed on for, for the tariffs and all this stuff,” said Jacqui Rose Tucker, a resident of Southwest Atlanta who spoke with NBC News’ Gabriella Rudy outside a grocery store.
“My dollar does not go very far anymore,” she said, “This little bit of groceries was $218. It’s ridiculous. So yeah, I’m real concerned.”
An unaffordable dream
While daily costs are straining people’s wallets, longer-term investments like housing are also forcing voters to make sacrifices.
In Alaska, the median home price in September was up by 4.0% year over year at $415,805, above the national average of $389,601 which was down 0.1%, according to data from Redfin.
In Ohio, while median home prices are still below the national average, prospective buyers in September saw prices rise by 5.6% year over year across the state.
States with tight Senate races are also overrepresented on Redfin’s list of cities where the price of a home has risen the most over the past year:
In Akron, Ohio, average home prices are up 22% from last year, while in Cleveland they’ve risen by 13%.
Joining Akron and Cleveland are Miami, metro Atlanta, Charleston, South Carolina and Cedar Rapids, Iowa — all in the top 10.
As housing prices increase in many desirable metro areas, however, higher borrowing costs at the same time are putting homeownership out of reach for many younger voters, especially Gen Z and millennials.
The average interest rate on a 30-year-fixed mortgage Monday was 7.27%.
Your money buys you less
While Americans are technically earning more in dollar terms on average, paychecks are not keeping up with the pace of inflation.
Wages in September grew by 3.0% year over year. But the annual inflation rate hit 3.7%. Adjusting for inflation, this means average hourly earnings nationwide fell by about 0.7%.
This disparity is another source of economic pressure on voters going into Election Day.
But the gap between wage growth and inflation is significantly wider in some of the states that will be most closely watched Tuesday night.
In Nebraska, purchasing power fell by 3.5% over the three months ending in August, relative to regional inflation. Iowa saw a drop of 2.6%. And in Alaska, real pay fell by 2.0% compared to the same period last year.
“I work extraordinarily hard. I’m a single mom. I’ve got three kids,” said Jennie Larson, who planned to vote Tuesday morning in Iowa and spoke with NBC News in West Des Moines. “I go out to eat once a week, right? That’s like my one luxury. But outside of that, like the gas prices, the food prices, it’s unbelievable.”
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