In their quest to undo Donald Trump’s grip on voters, Democrats have staked their hopes on one word above all others: affordability.

It has become a staple of press conferences, a priority of candidates and a subject of legislation ahead of the November midterm elections. When Democrats don’t like something that Trump does – a frequent occurrence – their counter-argument is that Americans would have been better off if the president instead concentrated on making life less expensive.

“Democrats in the House and Senate [are] focusing on lowering your costs, dealing with affordability. Republicans, led by Donald Trump, are focused on spending treasure and, God forbid, lives on military adventurism overseas,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told reporters this week, just before the chamber voted to advance a resolution halting further attacks on Venezuela without congressional permission.

It’s a turning of the tables for Democrats, who spent much of Joe Biden’s presidency struggling to respond as a historic wave of pandemic-related inflation rippled through the US economy and sent his presidency to a desultory end after a single term.

Trump returned to the White House after a campaign spent insisting that he could lower prices on “day one”. The promise was widely viewed as an economic impossibility, and now the chickens are coming home to roost for the president, with Democrats the likely beneficiaries.

“It’s a weakness for Republicans, because Republicans did say, hey, look, man, you put us in charge, and we’re going to make this better, and prices are going to go down. And, of course, they haven’t,” said Marc Hetherington, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“That’s an Achilles heel, and Democrats are well-served to take advantage of it.”

The latest indication of the GOP’s jitters arrived on Thursday, when 17 House Republicans broke with their party’s leaders and joined Democrats to pass a three-year reinstatement of premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans.

It was a turnaround from October, when Democrats sparked a record-long government shutdown by refusing to vote for funding bills unless the subsidies were extended, noting that people who purchase insurance through the ACA exchanges would see significant price increases without the aid.

The resistance eventually broke, but Republican House speaker Mike Johnson then announced he would not allow any legislation reinstating the credits for any length of time to come to the floor. Moderate Republicans then circumvented him to force a vote on the three-year extension – which was the Democrats’ preferred option.

“It left us with two options - either expiration or clean extension. And clean extension is a far better option, in my view, and that’s why I proceeded down the path that I did,” Republican congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, one of the main players in the revolt, said in an interview with NPR.

While the bill is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate without changes, Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries hailed its approval as a sign the party’s strategy is working. “Democrats in the minority, governing as if we’re in the majority, because we believe that we have to get things done for the American people in the midst of this affordability crisis, which is not a hoax,” he said after the vote.

The last part has become a staple line for Jeffries, after Trump dismissed affordability concerns as a “hoax” at a Pennsylvania rally in December.

Yet the data underscores why Americans remain worried about their livelihoods. While inflation is today nowhere near as high as the more than 9% peak hit in mid-2022 during Biden’s presidency, prices continue to grow above the target set by the inflation-fighting Federal Reserve, rising at an annual rate of 2.7% in November, according to the latest consumer price index data.

A NPR/PBS News/Marist poll published in December showed that public approval of Trump’s handling of the economy has dropped to 36%, the lowest level since the survey began asking the question.

Schumer doubled down at his recent press conference, promising that “Democrats are going to make healthcare and other high costs, the high cost of living, the No 1 issue for all of 2026”.

They are set to be joined in the campaign by outside groups that have already spent big to put the issue on voters’ radar. Leor Tal, campaign director of non-profit Unrig Our Economy, said the group had spent $10m last year encouraging constituents to contact Republican lawmakers and tell them “to stop driving up costs on everything from hamburgers to healthcare to holiday gifts”.

“One vote won’t undo all they’ve done to make life more expensive for everyday Americans, like the historic healthcare cuts they have already made. But it’s safe to say they have heard their constituents’ complaints,” she said.

Republicans, by contrast, have banked that their political fortunes will reverse during the upcoming tax season, thanks to policies enacted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last summer, which they have now rebranded as the “Working Families Tax Cut”.

“Those provisions will hit American households and wallets, and you’re going to see all boats begin to rise,” Johnson said this week.

“All American families are going to receive the largest tax refund they ever have, and that all begins very soon here.”

Republicans are otherwise sticking to what Hetherington described as a familiar playbook, by seeking to divert voters’ attention elsewhere, such as to Trump’s successful raid on Venezuela, or his allegations of widespread fraud in childcare spending.

Many in the party have also tried to argue that the increase in prices, which intensified as the economy recovered from Covid, is the fault of Biden, a strategy Hetherington said was unlikely to work.

“The political science would suggest that whoever happens to be in charge, whether they are responsible for the inflation or not, they tend to get punished for it,” he said.

“I don’t know how nobody came up with the term affordability before, but it really seems to resonate with people. It doesn’t seem to be getting old.”