Sticker Shock and Solidarity

State of Us: How rising prices might redraw political lines

There’s a moment in every grocery store, housewares aisle, or pharmacy visit now where I still pause in disbelief. What used to be a routine errand feels more like shopping with a calculator in one hand and fingers crossed on the other. The sticker shock is real—but beyond it lies something deeper.

At the national level, public perception of the economy still follows a familiar partisan script. Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index (measured -100 to +100) reflects both how Americans view current economic conditions and where they think the economy is headed. In February, they reported a typical partisan reversal whereby Republicans swung from -42 to +24 and Democrats dropped from +22 to -49. The economy, once again, became yet another Rorschach test for political identity.

But perception isn’t the same as experience and that is where Civic Pulse comes in. By shifting the lens from how people think the economy is doing to how they themselves are doing, the story changes, and we move beyond the usual partisan noise.

While the topline isn’t breaking news (yes, people are still stressed about money), a few undercurrents are worth surfacing, especially as we try to make sense of the emotional politics of this moment. Because while economic perception may be partisan, economic stress is something else entirely.

Continuity Isn’t Calm. It’s Chronic.

One of the more surprising things in the data? Just how little has changed. People have been stressed about the economy for months, and those stress levels haven’t meaningfully budged since the Trump administration.

But here’s the twist: stability doesn’t mean relief. Personal stress about money may have plateaued, but that doesn’t mean people are okay with it. It’s just become part of life. Always there, impossible to ignore, but no longer shocking.

Personal Economic Stress: An Income Divide

So what does shape people’s experience of economic stress?

We looked across three main sources of economic strain: cost of living, job-related concerns, and general economic anxiety. Most of the usual suspects—gender, geography, even partisanship—don’t significantly change how that stress is experienced. Take cost-of-living stress, for example: it shows up at nearly the same levels regardless of political affiliation.

In other words, unlike economic confidence (rooted in a narrative), which varies sharply by party, personal economic strain (rooted in experience) shows little evidence of partisan polarization. The stress people feel in their daily lives appears to be shaped more by concrete financial realities like their income. As an example, here is the relationship between income and reporting stress about cost-of-living.

But, what exactly people worry about varies by where they sit on the income ladder.

For those in households making under $50k, the cost of living is their number one source of economic strain. These are people who are worried about paying rent, groceries, and gas. They talk predominantly about basic needs, not lifestyle upgrades.

“Not being able to make big bills that come up." – 47-year-old male from Yorktown, Virginia

But for those in households earning over $100k, the concern shifts: they’re less worried about affording life and more worried about saving for the future or losing it all.

“I can pay my bills, but I have to choose between spending a little on myself or saving.” – 29-year-old female from Iowa City, Iowa

There are also meaningful differences in cost-of-living stress by education level, but those tend to track closely with income. Among people over 30, college graduates report less cost-of-living stress than individuals who do not have a college degree. The gap doesn’t show up as clearly among younger adults, since many recent grads are still early in their career and earning less.

And somewhat surprisingly, for age, the 65+ group stands out for having lower stress about cost of living (19%) relative to most younger people. This perhaps points to the need for financial data to capture more than income (e.g., wealth, economic comfort). Or maybe it is a reflection of just how much money young people think you need to afford life (spoiler: for Gen Z it is 580K+ per year; see here).

Collateral Damage of Federal Decisions

Job-related economic stress has also ticked upward particularly in regions with direct impacts from federal policy shifts. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Washington, D.C. area, where job stress jumped more than 7 percentage points since January. But notably, other places that are deeply tied to national-level economic policy in healthcare, energy, transportation, and education, are also showing increased stress related to jobs.

The Price of Policy

As we showed you last week, mentions of “tariffs” in open-ended responses skyrocketed in early April and the sentiment is overwhelmingly negative. While this might seem like a niche policy point, it’s a reminder that macroeconomic levers may be intellectually abstract, but have specific tangible impacts.

People aren’t just hearing about tariffs, they are seemingly feeling them too. And that unease is showing up in their outlook. Among all the respondents who mentioned tariffs, 73% said they were dissatisfied with the direction of the country compared to 53% of those who didn’t mention tariffs.

“The tariffs and looming recession provide a grim outlook for people like me” 29-year-old Hispanic female from Los Angeles, California

And it’s not just that people are feeling tariffs, they're paying attention to stories about them too. We added a new question to our ongoing survey to ask everyone: “Tell us about a news story that caught your attention recently?” And, since we launched that question in April, 15% of people have brought up tariffs on their own. As a point of reference, the Pope has been in 13% of responses and AI a mere 0.7%, which includes quite a few references to an AI photo of Trump as the Pope.

The Economy Drives Discontent

People aren’t just feeling the impact of policy shifts like tariffs; they’re naming them. They're connecting what they see in the news with what they feel in their wallets. And that connection is fueling a broader sense of national dissatisfaction.

When we asked people how they feel about the direction of the country, those who were dissatisfied overwhelmingly cited the economy as the reason (31%). Those who were satisfied? Much less likely to bring it up (19%).

This asymmetry matters. The economy doesn’t just influence public mood—it explains it. And right now, most Americans are in a mood.

Among the “completely dissatisfied,” stress about the economy is nearly double that of the “completely satisfied.”

Though Republicans are less likely than Democrats to be dissatisfied with the direction of the country, those who are dissatisfied are much more likely to mention the economy as the reason. Among the 31% of Republicans who are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, 45% of them cite the economy as the reason, compared to 24% of the dissatisfied Democrats.

Which brings us to the final twist.

You might be wondering how we got this far without saying the word inflation. It’s there—implicitly—in the way people talk about cost of living and rising prices. But interestingly, most aren’t using the term itself. Instead, they describe the effects: “Life seems unaffordable” or “the costs of everything is crazy and with the tariffs only to get even worse.” But when people do make reference to inflation it’s bundled up with the rest:

“Inflation is high and with tariffs skyrocketing prices, everything will get worse. Don't get me started about the stock markets!” 61-year-old male from Rochester, Michigan

Final Thoughts

We often treat economic stories as technical or transactional. They’re about markets, metrics, and monetary policy. But this data reminds us: economic issues are emotional issues.

The lack of partisan difference in personal economic stress is striking. Not because everyone is experiencing the same reality, but because people across the political spectrum are feeling it in deeply personal ways. What stands out instead are the sharp divides by income: not just in how secure people feel, but in how they talk about that insecurity. For some, the language is about survival (paying rent, keeping the lights on, stretching groceries) and for others, it’s framed around opportunity (job security, professional growth, or maintaining status). It’s a reminder that the divides that shape us aren’t always red or blue.

So the next questions become:

• What happens when economic stress becomes a shared, cross-partisan experience?

• What kinds of strain drive people to action and what pushes them away?

• If the old political narratives don’t fit anymore, what new ones could take their place?

• And what coalitions might emerge when voters are united not by ideology, but by the price of milk?

Maybe the most powerful force in politics right now isn’t polarization but the produce aisle.

Trying to make sense of the price of goods and everything else.