GOP Faces 2026 Trouble as Wages Fail To Keep Up

It has been just over a year since the 2024 presidential election, when Donald Trump swept all seven swing states and captured the national popular vote, the first Republican to do so in two decades. Yet after a rough showing for Republicans in the 2025 off-year elections, the party’s path to success in 2026 will hinge on whether it can deliver strong economic gains for working Americans over the next year, something it has struggled to do in its first 10 months.

Looking at issue polling before the 2024 election, there were three core areas where Trump was favored that led to his win. In an Oct. 19-22, 2024, Economist/YouGov poll, when asked who voters thought would do a better job handling different issues, Harris led in health care, abortion, and climate, and Trump led on foreign policy, immigration, and inflation and jobs.

While neither candidate led on every issue, Trump won because his issues were the most important to Americans. In the same poll, the largest share of respondents listed inflation and prices as the most important issue at 25%, followed by 13% with immigration and 11% with jobs and the economy. The fourth, fifth, and sixth most important issues were health care, abortion, and climate change.

One year later, the most important issues had changed only slightly. In an Oct. 31-Nov. 3 2025 Economist poll, inflation and prices were the top issue with 25%, jobs and the economy were second at 13%, followed by health care at 12% and immigration at 8%.

The contrast between the unchanging position of inflation and jobs and the decline in the importance of immigration is significant. During the first 10 months of Trump’s presidency, the share of voters who named immigration as the nation’s top issue fell by five percentage points, including a 15-point drop among Trump supporters, from 30% to 15%. This likely stems from Trump’s early success on border and immigration policy, which included closing the border within months of taking office and deporting 500,000 people, along with another 1.5 million illegals who left the country on their own, according to the Department of Homeland Security, during the first nine months of his presidency. His approval on immigration currently sits at -1, 10 points better than his overall approval, which sits at -11 in the RealClearPolitics Average. Because of Trump’s success so far, immigration has become less of an issue for Americans.

However, the same positivity is not evident in his handling of the economy, where his approval rating is lower than his overall rating at -13.8. Disapproval comes even though inflation has stayed around 3% for more than a year and a half, and GDP grew by 2% year over year in both the first and second quarters of 2025; figures that, while not exceptional, usually reflect a stable and healthy economy.

This is because a clearer picture of how most Americans are experiencing the economy comes from looking at inflation-adjusted wage growth, not the top-line metrics. From the first quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2025, inflation-adjusted wages increased by only ~2.5%, while inflation-adjusted GDP has risen by ~15%. This means that most of the economic gains are not reaching the median wage earner but are instead concentrated among those with major investments in stocks and real estate. Since only 10% of Americans own 87% of corporate equities and mutual funds, the people benefiting from the strong stock market, but low wage growth, are too narrow a group to sustain broad political support.

The gap between rising GDP and slow wage growth is a key reason the Trump administration has pursued deportations and higher tariffs. The administration argues that reducing competition from foreign workers, both in the United States and overseas, will push wages up by limiting the supply of labor. So far, however, those wage increases have not appeared.

Due to his failure to improve the economy on the issue of wage growth, voters are now split evenly on whether the Republican Party or the Democratic Party would better handle the issue of the economy. On another increasingly important issue, health care, 44% think Democrats would handle it better than Republicans, while only 27% believe Republicans would.

The issues that helped Trump win in 2024 are now evenly split between the parties, while Democrats hold an advantage on issues that have become more important to voters. As a result, Democrats lead the 2026 Generic Congressional Ballot RCP Average by 4.1 points, their strongest showing in the metric since Trump took office.

Without strides on health care or the economy that can be felt by Americans in the middle-income brackets, Republicans will face problems in 2026 and beyond. Even if inflation remains relatively low and GDP continues to grow, if wages continue to stagnate, Republicans will likely lose their power in government.