The Democratic Party can’t agree on much these days — not on shutdown strategy, not on Gaza, not on “abundance.” But walk into any Democratic campaign event this election season, and you’ll hear the same refrain, regardless of where that candidate sits on the ideological spectrum: The cost of living is too expensive, and we’re going to fix it.
From democratic socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in New York to centrist gubernatorial hopefuls Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, the party’s message has crystallized around a single promise: making life more affordable.
Whether they’re successful — and whether Democrats will continue to use that message as a rallying cry in the 2026 midterms — may be decided on Tuesday when voters go to the polls.
The message is a departure from recent election cycles, when the party relied on opposition to President Donald Trump as the glue that held their electoral coalition together. And it’s a signal, perhaps, that they’ve learned something from Trump’s electoral success.
In media interviews, debate appearances and campaign speeches, Mamdani has pledged to fight with Trump on nearly every aspect of his agenda — from his ramped-up ICE deportations to his threats to deploy the National Guard to the country’s largest city — except for one: lowering costs.
In fact, affordability is one of the few areas in which Mamdani has offered tepid praise to the president, including at a stadium-packed rally on Sunday that featured fellow progressives, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
“Trump, for all his many flaws, had promised [voters] an agenda that would put more money in their pockets and lower the cost of living,” Mamdani said.
Though Mamdani couched his praise with an assertion that Trump has since “lied” about executing that promise, the statement still marks an acknowledgement of the power of the affordability-focused message that fueled Trump’s victory last year over former Vice President Kamala Harris, when graphics illustrating the rising cost of basic foods such as eggs were a mainstay at Trump’s campaign events.
“What that man named Donald Trump did do is he said, ‘I feel your pain. I know that you’re hurting, and I have an explanation,’” Sanders said during an interview with CNN, days after he issued a scathing rebuke to Democrats for “abandoning working class people.”
It’s not that recent Democratic campaigns haven’t focused on the working class — despite the perception that Harris missed the mark on centering affordability, she did release proposals to lower the costs of groceries, child care and health care. Rather, the scope of issues Democrats have elevated in their campaigns has narrowed. In short: It’s all about affordability, a strategy that DNC Chair Ken Martin credited this month for recent party wins and polling advantages.
“Democratic candidates up and down the ballot have effectively focused on affordability while painting their opponents as too extreme and too closely aligned with Donald Trump,” Martin wrote in a recent memo.
In their platforms, remarks and ads, this year’s Democratic candidates have distanced themselves from the issues that dominated previous election cycles — gender equality and police reform among them — to instead home in on a message focused on lowering costs.
It’s a message focused less on former President Biden’s call to “restore the soul of the country” or the ambiguities of strengthening “American values,” and more on the concrete reality of rising costs.
And the shift is most apparent in candidates that have previously run for office.
In 2018, the impetus for Rep. Sherrill’s initial run for Congress was — as stated in that campaign’s first advertisement — Trump’s attack on “the values” instilled in her by her father, a combat veteran.
This year, the first ad of her New Jersey gubernatorial campaign had a much more concrete focus.
“I’m running for governor to defend the state we love. To drive down costs for housing, health care and utilities,” she said.
And if the messaging wasn’t enough, in the lead-up to Election Day, Sherrill is holding a “Driving Down Costs” bus tour that will touch down in each of the state’s 21 counties.
“From day one of this campaign, I’ve been laser-focused on driving down costs, and that remains my North Star as we take that message to all 21 counties this week,” Sherrill said in a statement on the bus tour.
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Spanberger, too, has kept her campaign focused on affordability, bobbing and weaving around more divisive issues, such as state Democrats’ polarizing mid-decade redistricting push or the exposure of violent text messages by Virginia Attorney General nominee Jay Jones.
Among the most detailed policy platforms Spanberger has released is an “Affordable Virginia Plan,” which includes proposals to lower health care, housing and energy costs, and a “Growing Virginia Plan” centered on securing more private investment and boosting workforce training opportunities. She often touts the plans in her advertisements.
In a reversal from last year, when the Democratic focus on Biden’s age and intraparty fighting over the war in Gaza only highlighted Trump’s laser focus on targeting costs, Democratic candidates have the ability to exploit the attention-consuming, coalescing controversial policies of Trump’s administration, whether that be increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations, large-scale use of tariffs or legally dubious National Guard deployments.
Democratic candidates have been given the space to retake ownership of an issue polling suggests remains the most salient for Americans: rising costs. Next week’s election will offer the first indication of how effective the party has been in doing so.
