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Over Three-Quarters Of Voters Say They’re Worse Off Than The Previous Generation, Poll Shows

Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour

A majority of voters believe that living a middle-class life is becoming increasingly out of reach, as affordability remains a top concern with midterm elections just months away, according to a New York Times (NYT) poll.

The poll, conducted from Jan. 12-17, found that 77% of respondents said achieving a middle-class lifestyle is generally harder to achieve than it was for the previous generation. Among respondents aged 18–29 and 30–44, 84% of both groups said it was harder to achieve a middle-class lifestyle than a generation ago, while only 4% said it was easier.

Voters are losing confidence in their ability to get ahead with 59% saying they worry about affording rent, gas, groceries and bills, and an additional 11% saying they could not afford them at all, according to the NYT poll. Meanwhile, just 29% of voters said they can afford such routine expenses without worrying about the cost, the survey found.

Only 14% of the poll’s respondents said they believe they are getting ahead financially.

Younger Americans expressed significantly more economic stress than respondents over the age of 65, the survey found. Half of its participants under the age of 45 said they are doing financially worse than their parents were at their age, with only 10% of those feeling they were doing well financially. Seventy-five percent of voters under 30 years old said they cannot afford the life they feel they should be able to afford.

A majority (54%) of voters under 30 saying owning the home they would like to own was “out of reach” for them, the survey found. More than half of all voters said housing and education were so expensive they had become wholly unaffordable.

For voters under 65 years old looking ahead to retirement, 75% said they could not afford it or they felt insecure about it, according the poll.

Seventy percent of the poll’s respondents rated the economy as “fair” or “poor,” and 31% of respondents believe the economy is better off than it was a year ago, with 29% rating the economy as “excellent” or “good.”

Voters remained split on who to blame for their cost of living issues. President Donald Trump received 31% of the voters’ blame, former President Joe Biden received 35% and 33% said neither president was responsible for the crisis. However, 51% of respondents said Trump’s policies since taking office for the second time had made life less affordable for most Americans.

A Napolitan News Service poll released Friday similarly found that only just under half (49%) of registered voters said they can set aside money to save while 45% said all of their income is used to pay for living expenses.

The recent polling results show how affordability anxieties expands past a strong stock market and consumer spending. Democrats’ messaging on the issue helped them sweep gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey on Nov. 4, 2025.

Trump has also turned his focus to various policies to ease the affordability crisis, such as capping credit card interest rates at 10%. He also backed the Senate’s massive bipartisan housing package — but it was stripped from the National Defense Authorization Act in December due to opposition in the House.

The NYT poll was conducted among 1,625 registered voters nationwide from Jan. 12 to 17, 2026. Over 98% of respondents were contacted via cell phone and the survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.