The Economy Won’t Win The Midterms For Democrats

Don’t get cocky, though. This non-presidential election cycle will come down to pure partisanship and voter turnout. The party with the energy will win.

Joseph Ford Cotto | September 24, 2026

The economy will not determine how the midterms play out. Coming from me, that may surprise a few people.

In 2024, I created the Five-Point Forecast. This model asserted that household economics would decide the race between President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Its five points were economic sentiment and inflation; jobs and growth as voters actually felt them; energy prices and consumer confidence; public judgment of Washington’s economic responsiveness; and the exact polling which had earned trust.

That forecast correctly called Trump’s national victory and every swing state. It worked because a presidential electorate still featured enough movable voters for prices, wages, fuel bills, and distrust of government spending to cut through old partisan habits.

The midterms are a different animal.

Presidential years pull in a gargantuan slice of the country. Midterm years do not. Since 1980, reported turnout among voting-age citizens has averaged 63 percent in presidential elections, but only 48 percent in midterms. A 15-point drop-off changes who shows up. The remaining voters are older, more settled, and far less willing to split tickets over a jobs report. They vote because they already pledge allegiance to their side.

Verified records prove the process. Sixty-eight percent of 2020 presidential voters returned in 2022. Trump’s 2020 supporters turned out at 71 percent. President Joe Biden’s supporters turned out at 67 percent. Among people who voted in both 2018 and 2022, 95 percent of 2018 Republicans and 92 percent of 2018 Democrats stayed with the same party. Switching was barely a ripple.

That is why the Five-Point Forecast does not travel.

In 2024, inflation’s peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022, the lag between official cooling and household pain, weak feelings about real wages (despite a 3.8-percent unemployment rate), energy costs that hammered confidence, and skepticism over Washington’s spending binge........

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