Four years ago, in the run-up to the last midterm elections, prices were rising more than twice as quickly as they are now. President Trump has repeatedly reminded voters of the 2022 inflation rate, blaming high prices on his predecessor. But Americans, weary from six years of quickly rising prices that have eaten away at their paychecks, might blame Republicans anyway as they head to the polls next month. Inflation sits at about 3.4%, far lower than its recent peak in 2022, when it topped 9%.

Yet that means prices are still rising, adding to the higher costs consumers have absorbed in previous years. All kinds of everyday goods are 30% more expensive than they were in 2020. The prices of new cars, child care, beef and paper towels have all soared. Economists say that consumers generally focus more on the cumulative effect of years of steadily rising prices than on individual monthly metrics, and that it takes years for consumers to adjust to new price baselines. That helps explain why voters might be aggravated and still surprised when they see, for example, a $5 price tag on a gallon of milk.

Prices for some items, like eggs, butter and cheese, have fallen over the past year. But newer signs of pricing pressure have emerged: Gas prices have lurched higher in recent months. Mortgage rates that have pushed past 7% and record home prices have shattered the playbook for buying a new home.“Voters have become incredibly impatient and disconcerted” by inflation, said Stephen Weymouth, a professor at Georgetown University’s business school who has studied the impact of inflation on elections.

Slowing wage growthOver the past six years, prices have, on average, risen faster than wages.A swath of the population simply didn’t receive wage hikes to match the pace of inflation, which has eroded Americans’ purchasing power and likely contributed to an overall souring mood. The trend has been pronounced recently: In both July and August, inflation outpaced average hourly wage growth.

Many employers have given raises that match inflation. But those raises don’t necessarily lead to happier consumers. When they give raises, bosses tend to tell staff that “you’ve done a great job at work and I’m rewarding you,” said Neale Mahoney, an economics professor at Stanford University. “So when you go to the grocery store and you see the price increase eroding away those wage gains, you see it as something being done to you.”Age of inflationOverall prices, as measured by the consumer-price index, have risen almost 29% in the past six years.

During the six years before that, prices crept up at a third of that pace. Since the pandemic, prices have leapt in all corners of the economy: coffee, cleaning products, streaming services, hardware. A Hulu no-ads subscription jumped from around $12 to more than $20 and a New York City subway fare hit $3. The USPS “forever stamp” cost 55 cents in 2020. It has risen 49% to 82 cents.

Big-ticket itemsInflation data usually doesn’t include some of the expenses people care about most. U.S. out-of-pocket spending on healthcare per capita rose roughly 47% between 2020 and 2026. The cost of borrowing money also keeps climbing. Prices of housing, daycare and preschool, car maintenance and pet services have all grown more over the past six years than average hourly wages. Meanwhile, Americans have found themselves saddled with ballooning debt, further blunting the impact of income growth.

A recent report by Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, found that in recent years, more than half of workers’ raises have gone toward debt payments. Strong spending, sinking confidenceAmerican consumers are spending big, and household spending has grown faster over the past 12 months as of August than it did last year.

The S&P 500 is up 14% this year and the unemployment rate is low. So consumers might have a pretty good view of the economy—if it weren’t for the stubborn inflation squeezing their disposable incomes.

While economists keep a close eye on the year-over-year inflation rate, consumers often compare prices they see at the store to benchmarks stuck in their head from years ago. And many consumers, when recalling what they believe they paid for a product a year ago, think they paid less than they actually did, said Michael Weber, an economist at Purdue University. They also notice price increases much more than they notice price cuts, said Weber.

This might help explain why consumer sentiment dropped last month, according to the University of Michigan’s survey; sentiment among Republicans has fallen 20% since the start of the year. Impact on the midtermsInflation often punishes incumbents. In 2022 and 2024, high prices were the Democrats’ Achilles’ heel. Now, a president who made inflation a centerpiece of his political comeback is being asked to answer for the fact that on average, it costs around $50,000 to buy a car and around $60 to fill its tank with gas.

It is easy for voters to connect the dots between Trump’s policies and high prices, Weymouth said. Consumers watched the prices of goods like bananas rise after the onset of reciprocal tariffs, Mahoney noted, and fall only slightly after those tariffs were rescinded.

In a recent Wall Street Journal poll, 60% of respondents said Trump’s policies had made the economy worse.A White House spokeswoman said that the president had cut the cost of prescription drugs and added more than a million private-sector jobs to the economy.“The Democrats and Joe Biden destroyed our economy and crushed American families, and President Trump is cleaning up the damage caused by their failed economic policies,” she said.

Both parties are focusing on prices in their campaign messaging.

But how inflation affects the midterms might depend on which kinds of voters are seeing the biggest financial strain. Energy prices, for example, often affect lower-income consumers, because they spend a bigger chunk of their paycheck on gas. Data from the New York Fed, which estimates the inflation rates experienced by different socioeconomic groups, shows that this year’s inflation has hit the bottom 40% of earners significantly more than the top 20%. Republican lawmakers continue to stress that the inflation rate, while above the Fed’s 2% target, is much lower than it once was.

But “campaigning on ‘the rate of price increases has slowed down’ is a bad idea,” Weber said, “because that’s not how consumers think about prices.”This explanatory article may be periodically updated. Write to Owen Tucker-Smith at Owen. Tucker-Smith@wsj.com