Why does Rory Stewart call the 2026 US midterms a cost-of-living election?

Rory Stewart, reporting from Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia before the vote, said the election did not feel like a referendum on democracy on the ground. Voters he met saw Trump less as a moral threat than as a supposed great businessman who turned out to be an ordinary politician. In his account they had backed Trump because prices rose under Biden, and punished him because groceries and gas were still unaffordable two years later.

• Rory Stewart said even a pastor he interviewed dismissed Trump's flaws by saying all politicians are the same, rather than condemning him.
• Rory Stewart said focus groups pointed the same way as his own conversations.

▸In their words

“It felt like an election about the cost of living, primarily.” Rory Stewart · at 24:27 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on The Rest Is Politics (2026-11-04). Read the whole episode summary →

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