Nate Cohn

That's his second worst result in the poll, trailing only the Epstein files.

We asked people what they worried most about affording, and a majority of people listed, call it a big-ticket middle-class essential, health care, housing, education, children, the sort of things that if you can't afford them, you're no longer living a middle-class life.

They were less likely to mention, call them regular or monthly expenses, food, utilities, transportation.

That's not to say that they aren't concerned about those things, too, or that they aren't really upset about the price of eggs.

But only about a fifth of people said that that's what they worried most about affording.

We also asked people just whether something was unaffordable to them or not.

And once again, those sort of monthly expenses, utilities, gas, food, only about a fifth of people said that they couldn't afford those items.

Now, it's worth noting, of course, that for lower income people, the story is pretty different.

Lower income people living paycheck to paycheck, they are being kept up at night over those regular monthly expenses.

But when talking about the electorate overall or middle class, let alone upper middle class people, those big ticket items like housing and education tend to prevail.

I think that's right.

I do think that there is a question about whether voters think any progress is being made.

Voters think that Donald Trump's policies have made things less affordable.

I can imagine that if Trump had made some progress on these issues or was seen as focused on these issues, that his political standing would be much better, even if there was still a very long way to go before the ordinary 28-year-old could buy a house like we imagine someone in 1970 could have bought.

But I think you're right that the problems that we're talking about, education, health care, housing, child care and so on, these are longstanding problems.

They're problems where costs have been going up even during periods of low inflation.

And it's unlikely that they'll be addressed in Donald Trump's presidency, even if he was focused on them.

Yeah.

And I would also point out they think he's made these problems worse.

So not only is he not doing enough to solve them, but they think he's making things more expensive, too.