Midterm vote is about 'what's best for my family': Voters talk 2026 midterms

Josh York, a retired Army major who now works in health care administration in Anchorage, Alaska, has seen firsthand how high prices for fuel have kept Alaskans off the road. In the far reaches of America’s largest state, prices are as high as $24 per gallon.

“The gas prices don't seem to be coming down, and believe me, I watch,” York, a three-time Trump voter, told ABC News.

“Recently, we were out in the middle of rural Alaska, and we were paying $8.99 a gallon for gas,” York said, blaming the higher prices on the Iran war. That war has substantially slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, experts say, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas transited before the war.

The economy is on Americans’ minds across the country ahead of midterm elections on Nov. 3, when voters in a handful of key states will wield outsize impact on control of the United States Congress.

ABC News traveled to those states -- Alaska, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Maine -- finding many Americans who are frustrated with their personal finances and aware their vote would be a referendum on President Donald Trump’s job performance.

The Frontier state

Trump traveled outside the continental United States this week to boost Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who faces a reelection challenge from Democratic congresswoman Mary Peltola – one of four seats the Democrats hope they can capture to win control of the U.S. Senate.

The president defended the war against Iran, telling Alaskans the war would end soon and prices would come down when it did, and said his opponents had made the election about affordability.

“Every time they want to try and get me, they say 'affordability, sir. This and that.' I said, 'They caused the problem,’ he said at a rally in Wasilla, 45 miles north of Anchorage. “But we have reduced it very substantially.’”

The Senate race – analyzed as a toss-up in a state where Trump won by 13 points in 2024 – is reflecting the price pressures of voters. 

The president’s polling numbers have plummeted to record lows in recent months. Just over half of Americans, 52%, strongly disapprove of Trump, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll.

Sullivan, who is aligned with Trump and has backed the Iran war, acknowledged the conflict was causing higher prices and said it should end “soon.”

One voter said heating costs in Fairbanks had even exceeded mortgage costs.

York told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, co-anchor of "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," that even though he’s voted for Trump, he disapproved of the president across the board: in his handling of the economy, the Iran war and the overall direction the president was taking the country.

York, unsure about his decision between the candidates, said his vote would come down to the economy.

“I know that they both have their ideas for Alaska and how they want to do things. And I'm not gonna say one's right versus the other being wrong,” he said. “But at this point, I've got to look at what's best for my family. I've got to look at what's best for my kids.”

The heartland

In America’s heartland, voters told ABC News energy prices and the president’s trade policy were animating discussions around the midterm elections, including in a competitive Iowa senate race.

The rising diesel prices have crunched farmers who rely on diesel for transport.

“Our tanks over there hold 3,500 gallons. It costs $20,000 now to fill them. A year ago it cost [about] $12,000,” said cattle farmer Dan Pederson, who voted for the president three times.

“The ripple effect – hauling cattle, pickups, trucks, everything [is] just-- it's just astronomical. It's crazy,” he said.

Pederson said among his “staunch Republican friends” there was a lot of “wavering” on Trump. The Republican candidate for the Senate seat, Rep. Ashley Hinson, has broken with the president, urging him to bring the Iran war to an end.

The president announced an extraordinary remedy to the price of diesel last week, saying in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the two leaders had agreed to a “diesel deal” that would allow Russian diesel, largely blocked by sanctions and trapped because of Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, to enter world markets.

Many Republican lawmakers said the president’s move would benefit an autocratic government that invaded its neighbor, Ukraine.

“We need to lower gas prices in this country,” Hinson said. “We need to lower diesel prices, but I don't think we need to be making a deal with Russia to do it.”

In neighboring Nebraska, Republican congressman Don Bacon, who is stepping away from his own seat, said Republicans’ formula of backing Trump could prove costly.

The Republican worries about his party’s odds in traditionally red Nebraska and Kansas, midwestern Senate races where Democrats hope to manage surprise victories, he told Raddatz.

He credited his own independent streak with his own election victories.

“You got to be able to show that you're your own person and you represent the district,” he said.

In an X post this week, Bacon said Trump’s deal with Putin was a betrayal of Ukraine.

The president was “propping up a dictator’s invasion and throwing an ally under the bus,” he wrote. 

The independent Northeast

In the country’s Northeast, independent voters wield considerable influence. 

Democratic-leaning states here have continued to elect Republicans – like Maine’s five-term Sen. Susan Collins, who is seeking a sixth election.

Collins is one of the few Senate Republicans who regularly breaks with Trump, saying in a recent debate she “voted nine times against the president on the Iran war.”

Voters pointed to her role as the top appropriator in Congress, overseeing the key funding mechanisms that Mainers say gives them a crucial voice in Washington.

In a polarized era, voters said it’s Collins’ independent brand that has won her respect.

“I think that objectively speaking, she is the most bipartisan member of the Senate, and I think we need more Susan Collins, not fewer,” said self-described life-long Democrat Mary Anne Lynch. She plans to cast her ballot for Collins this November.

Brenda Garrand has been in Collins’ camp before, voting for her three times – but she says she won’t in 2026.

“I would say, for me, the most important reason to vote for Troy Jackson is to make sure that there is a Democratic Senate,” Garrand said.

Collins was not doing enough with her powerful perch, she argued.

“She has gone a step too far … [I’m] deeply disappointed in her behavior as a woman who has really reached the apex of an ability to make a difference,” Garrand said.

The Democratic senate nominee in neighboring New Hampshire sees the same dynamics at play in his state. Congressman Chris Pappas told Raddatz that Democrats’ margins in the Granite State had improved since Vice President Kamala Harris’s narrow victory there in 2024.

“I'm meeting Republicans every day that are opposed to what they see this administration doing,” he said. “I'm meeting libertarian-minded voters in the ‘Live Free or Die’ state that don't support the disgraceful immigration overreach with respect to [Immigrations and Custom Enforcement.]”

Pappas faces a known name brand in New Hampshire politics: John Sununu, the brother of Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.

Chris Ager, a former chair of the New Hampshire Republican party, called Sununu “that quintessential New Hampshire politician – very pragmatic, very common sense, very independent of Washington.”

He added, “I think that's going to sell very well on Nov. 3.”