Protesters march during the Affordable Energy Now campaign direct action rally on 13 October 2026 in College Park, Maryland.

for Progressive Maryland Cost of living has loomed over this election cycle as workers and unions champion candidates fighting for higher wages and tackling rising prices For millions of Americans heading to the polls on Tuesday, affordability is a constant and worsening issue, and it’s been a prevailing concern this election cycle.

In Lorain county, Ohio Gina Jones and her co-workers at the Lorain county job and family services have been on strike since February 2026, the longest public sector strike in Ohio history and on pace to break the US record for longest public sector strike.

voted for Donald Trump in 2024 by more than 5%. As the final day of voting nears, Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown has a slight lead on Republican Senate incumbent Jon Husted in polling, and the economy has been a key factor in the fight.

“They don’t pay a living wage any more. They used to,” Jones said. “Our healthcare coverage has stayed the same, but the cost of it has changed significantly. It used to be $35 a month for a family. In January it’s going to be $600 a month for a family for the same coverage.”She said as wages have lagged, with starting pay at about $15 an hour health insurance costs have eaten up any wage gains to the extent that some employees are making less than when they started. Nonpartisan political signs in Granville, Ohio, on 22 October 2026.

Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images Negotiations for a new union contract broke down with the county, now by three Republican commissioners, as workers are pushing for a $1 an hour increase to their base pay.

Daniel Petticord, the deputy director of the Lorain county jobs and family services, said in an email “management believes it recognizes the important efforts of our bargaining unit employees while maintaining fiscal responsibility,” and blamed the union for walking away from negotiations.

“We service the clients of Lorain county that are the poorest of the community, and some of the people that work at jobs and family services qualify for those same services,” Jones said. “We’re hoping that with the Ohio governor election, that we get somebody in there who will be in favor of labor and see the fact that people don’t make a living wage in Lorain county any more.”

In Minnesota, Bob Mattila, a special education paraprofessional in Minneapolis and SEIU Local 284 member, is looking for elected officials who will back state legislation that would increase pay for himself and his co-workers to $25 an hour and to lower their costs for health insurance.

“We simply aren’t paid enough to do the vitally important work that we do,” Mattila said. “I even take state health insurance because they decided I don’t make enough money.

“Money, power and respect. Those three things are critical to what we need out of our work and what we deserve from our elected officials,” he added. “Having very labor-friendly people in places of power is going to give workers like me things that we need to live, because we’re at a point where I can’t afford to put $50 of gas every time when I fill up my car when I’m not even making $25 an hour.”Labor leaders see a real advantage for Democrats now that so much focus is on the economy.

“The labor movement’s been talking about the issues that affect workers and the kitchen table for decades, and we’re now seeing that everybody else got the memo,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, which has been pushing to turn out 16 million union family voters this election.

An attendee holds a sign at a Union Now rally headlined by Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani in New York on 12 April 2026.

“It’s pervasive. Everywhere I travel, every campaign that you see is talking about what working people are struggling through, and it’s the cost of gas, groceries, rent and healthcare, but it’s also the fact that our pay just can’t keep up with the rising prices.”In Detroit, Michigan, another key battleground state, 27-year-old Bailee Porter, who has worked at Detroit Diesel and is a member of the United Auto Workers, has been canvassing for candidates such as Democrat Abdul El-Sayed for the US Senate, citing his support for Medicare for All, which the UAW has also backed She said rising prices of basic necessities have made budgeting and cutting back on essentials like groceries a common worry.

“It’s just costly on every aspect. It’s disrupting people’s routines, so it’s ridiculous. Food, gas. I don’t even want to talk about utility bills. It’s just insane,” said Porter. “Things should be affordable. Your basic necessities have to be affordable. There’s just no other way around it. They have to be. Legislation needs to be changed or enforced or written to where it can help the middle class and labor.”But the financial struggles experienced by many Americans are unlikely to be easily alleviated no matter who wins the midterms. Joe Biden, the US’s most pro-labor president in recent history, also failed to appease voters who were feeling left behind.

Researchers have noted the federal government’s definition of and tracking of poverty doesn’t account for the struggles Americans are facing, as the federal poverty line is outdated from the 1960s and doesn’t account for geographic discrepancies in costs of living.

“The percent of people that are struggling is so much higher than our official statistics are revealing,” said Dr Stephanie Hoopes, an economist and director of United for Alice. “These are often people who are keeping our economy running smoothly and fueling our economic growth, and yet they’re struggling to support their own families.” of US households, more than 54.5m households, faced financial hardship in 2024, according to a 2026 report by United for Alice.

12.5% of US households made under the federal poverty level threshold, an income of $15,060 annually for a single individual and $31,200 for a family of four.

28.8% of US households were Alice: asset limited, income constrained and employed. These households earn above the federal poverty level but did not make enough money to afford basic expenses in the county where they live.

2025 and 2026 projected data shows the costs of basic necessities continuing to outpace overall inflation.

“By some measures, our economy is doing great, unemployment rate is low, stock markets booming, productivity and GDP are growing,” Hoopes added. “But when you look at things like how many households are Alice [asset limited, income constrained and employed], and that number continuing to increase, and wages lagging behind the cost of living, there’s some real concerns in the economy.”

For Shunda Whitfield, a certified nursing assistant in St Louis, Missouri, those economic concerns can be life-threatening.

She has been struggling with a recent spike in costs for her medication for lupus, an autoimmune disease.

“I sometimes have to choose between if I’m going to get my medication or if I’m going to get groceries in house due to the fact that my medicine is going up,” said Whitfield, who has been struggling to afford a recent spike in costs for her lupus medication.

“You have to juggle things around to make sure you have cash to get to work to make the money to afford groceries or your medication,” she added. “I would like to see people get out here and vote to put people in place that are for the working people and not just for the billionaires.”