Rising costs of gas, healthcare squeeze US voters ahead of midterms

Denise Barber spent twenty-two years working in steel mills before switching careers to accounting. She retired three years ago. Now, at sixty-eight, she is thinking about going back to work.

The reason is simple arithmetic that no longer adds up. Gasoline prices have climbed steeply. Her husband needed medical care after a minor stroke, and the bills accumulated in what she calls a medical desert—a region where hospitals have closed and healthcare options have thinned. On a fixed income, the gap between what comes in and what goes out has become impossible to ignore. "The price of gas driving up there is outrageous," she said. "On a fixed income, it makes it really hard." She is not unique. Across the country, American voters are reporting that affordability has become their central worry as the midterm elections approach.

Barber lives in Mahoning Valley, in northeast Ohio, a region built on steel and heavy industry. It is also becoming a political battleground. For decades, the valley leaned Democratic—a union stronghold where working people had steady jobs and a voice in their workplaces. That shifted in 2016 when Donald Trump won the area by large margins, promising to bring manufacturing jobs back. The jobs did not return. The steel mills that once defined the region have largely disappeared. But the political realignment stuck. Mahoning Valley is now solidly Republican territory, yet this year it has become competitive again, not because voters have changed their minds about parties, but because the cost of living has become unbearable.

The numbers tell part of the story. Since the conflict with Iran began in late February, when Tehran retaliated against U.S.-Israel strikes by restricting access through the Strait of Hormuz, gasoline prices have jumped more than forty-five percent. The average price for regular unleaded has reached $4.37 per gallon. For someone like Barber, who drives her husband to medical appointments, this sometimes means hundreds of dollars more in weekly expenses. Grocery prices are up 2.2 percent from a year ago. Utilities continue to climb. The compounding effect is what workers and economists are calling the squeeze.

David Green, a labor organizer with the United Auto Workers union in Ohio, describes what he is seeing on the ground: smaller parts suppliers and independent shops are laying off workers and closing facilities. "Workers are getting crunched right now," he said. The anxiety is real enough that when researchers at Pew asked voters what they wanted congressional candidates to discuss, twenty-nine percent spontaneously named an economic concern. That is not a small number. It suggests that for nearly a third of the electorate, nothing else matters as much as whether they can afford to live.

The Senate race in Ohio has become the focal point. Sherrod Brown, a three-term Democratic senator, is running against Jon Husted, a Republican who took the seat vacated by JD Vance when he became vice president. Brown is campaigning directly on the cost-of-living crisis. "Working-class voters didn't want this war," he told reporters. "They didn't want to see explosions in costs of everything." He has also criticized Husted's support for data center investment, which has drawn local opposition. Brown noted that data centers have spent thirty million dollars in advertising against him, which he frames as evidence that powerful interests fear his willingness to challenge them.

Paul Sracic, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, believes the Republican Party faces genuine danger in Ohio despite the state's recent shift rightward. "The party in power always does poorly in midterm elections," he said. "It was going to be an uphill fight anyway." But gas prices, he argues, are the clearest measure of how people feel about the economy overall. When they rise sharply, voters punish whoever holds power.

Mike Rubicz, a retired steelworker, has watched Mahoning Valley transform from one of the world's great steel centers to a place where manufacturing jobs have nearly vanished. "Everyone in this valley is conscious of the need for manufacturing jobs," he said. "But the reality is, the ability of people to come to the valley and get a job is gone." That reality, combined with the immediate pressure of higher prices for gas, food, and medicine, creates a political opening that Democrats are trying to exploit. Whether that opening is wide enough to shift the outcome in a state Trump won decisively remains the central question heading into November.