- While Democrats championed job growth under Biden, Trump won over voters facing high prices.
- A BI analysis found that real wages fell in states that had the biggest swings toward Trump.
- Counties with higher costs of living also leaned more toward Trump than they did in 2020.
High prices dominated voters’ minds this election cycle — and likely played a key role in delivering President-elect Donald Trump’s victory.
On the campaign trail, Trump clashed with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over their handling of the economy.
Unemployment fell sharply during Biden’s first year in office and has remained low. Biden oversaw the creation of 16 million new jobs during his tenure since October, and his administration has often defended that growth.
But inflation also rose during the first years of Biden’s presidency, before its pace gradually slowed, creeping toward the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
Trump told voters he would offer relief to their wallets across the board, from groceries to housing.
“I am promising low taxes, low regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates, secure borders, low, low crime and rising incomes for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed.” Trump said during the speech in September. . “My plan will quickly beat inflation, quickly lower prices and reignite explosive economic growth.”
That promise resonated: Real, or inflation-adjusted, wage growth — or lack thereof — across the country points to one possible reason why.
Many states where Trump improved his margins the most saw big declines in real wages under Biden. The wage increases were more than offset by higher costs of living in these states.
Counties with higher costs of living also voted for Trump more than in 2020.
How Trump won on the awards
Business Insider looked at how the average hourly earnings for private workers in each state have changed from January 2021, when Biden took office, to last September. The BI adjusted the 2021 amounts using census tract-level inflation to understand how much real wages have changed across the US. Rhode Island had the highest increase in real wages, just one of about a dozen states to see an increase.
Using the 2020 and 2024 shares of Trump’s vote by state reported by The New York Times, BI found that states with the largest declines in real wages tended to have larger shifts toward Trump than other states.
Some of the biggest swings came in very blue and expensive states. New York, which saw an 8.3% drop in real wages and has a high cost of living, also saw a 6.5 percentage point increase in Trump’s share of the vote from 2020 to 2024. Maryland, which saw a drop in real wages of 11.2%, shifted toward Trump in 2024 by 5 percentage points.
The capital of the country was extraordinary. Real wages fell massively in expensive Washington, DC; even before adjusting for inflation, wages were roughly flat. While Trump saw a small increase in the percentage of the DC vote for him in 2024, it was one of the lowest percentage increases based on BI’s analysis.
The cost of living and unemployment levels also weighed on voter sentiment as they headed to the polls. Jed Kolko, an economist who served in the Biden administration, wrote in Matthew Yglesias’ “Slow Boring” column that higher unemployment rates in US counties over the past year coincided with a swing in the county’s vote to Trump.
The same goes for cost of living: “Districts with a higher cost of living swung more toward Trump in 2024 than in 2020. Expensive counties tend to be blue areas like big coastal cities; Harris won most of these costly districts, but by a smaller margin than Biden in 2020, when controlling for demographics, education and density,” Kolko wrote.
Kolko also found that job growth was not significantly related to voting patterns, while local federal spending from Biden’s signature infrastructure and industrial investment programs did not appear to affect county election results either.
Some experts have said that Trump’s tariff policies will fuel inflation and raise consumer prices. Trump has instead argued that his policies would help with costs, promising voters they will see improvements after he takes office.
“Prices are going to go down,” Trump said during a speech in August. “You just look: They’re going down and they’re going down fast, not just with insurance, with everything.”