Voters feelings about the affordability of the following items:

X ^ | 01/26/2026 | OSZ

[SmokingJoe]

Voters feelings about the affordability of the following items:

Transportation: 🟢 Affordable +53 Utilities: 🟢 Affordable +53

Food: 🟢 Affordable +47

Groceries: 🟢 Affordable +43

Having a family: 🟢 Affordable +7

Health Care: 🟢 Affordable +3

Housing: 🔴 Unaffordable -10

Education: 🔴 Unaffordable -24

NYT/Siena poll | 1/12-1/17 RV

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TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: affordability

[SmokingJoe]

So much for the Democrats "affordability" nonsense. Trump crushed that too.

[proxy_user]

Cars are affordable only because they offer 8-year loans. By the time you’re done paying for it, the car will be nearly worthless.

[Frank Drebin]

Cars...like boats...are a hole into which you pour money. Even when they are paid for they are not paid for. Fuel, maintenance, gas...ALL are a forever monthly payment. Buy good quality used is the way to mitigate your losses.

[alternatives?]

The biggest problem with education is quality.

[KC_Conspirator]

In VA, democraps said affordability over and over again, got into office and came up with new taxes to make everything more unaffordable.

[Steve_Seattle1]

The biggest rip-off of all is cable TV. I have no special channels in my Comcast subscription, but - if I don't make a change soon - I will be paying $3,400 a year just to watch my television and use my computer!!! That is insane.

I don't watch much TV, and 95% of my viewing is on about 15 channels, but to get those 15 I have to pay for more than a hundred I never watch.

[piasa]

Nothing is affordable.

[doorgunner69]

“Buy good quality used is the way to mitigate your losses.”

Yep, have two Toyota 4Runners that will out-live me I suspect.

[doorgunner69]

Cut the cable and go Roku.

Since we have cheap telcom internet, it was easy.

Do not care about network crap, only movies.

[missthethunder]

“The biggest problem with education is quality”

The same people who scammed them out of an
expensive worthless education are the ones that taught them socialism is good.

[Jarvis Law 2.0]

Look into the Roku option as others have suggested here. All you pay for is the inexpensive little box and remote, no monthly fees. Then get a fiber optic internet provider— T-mobile Fiber is in Seattle and provides monthly internet service for $70-80/month. We just ditched Comcast for Metronet in our area. No problems or regrets so far. Metronet announced their partnership with T-mobile fiber, so we’ll see what happens to our monthly payment of $70. You can add Suscriptions to Roku for additional money — We mainly watch it at night for the free Tubi & Youtube movies. Quite a detox to get away from the other crap passing for “entertainment and news” during the day.

[Migraine]

“buy good quality used”

When I was younger I would do that. I was a good enough mechanic and enjoyed it.
Nowadays my grease-monkey future is behind me. So my only hack is buying new with a 7-year all inclusive warranty. And yes, quality counts.

[Political Junkie Too]

This poll has some serious structural flaws.

Here is the crosstab link: Cross-Tabs: January 2026 Times/Siena National Poll of Registered Voters

Issue: High school education underweight

The sample size is high school education 17% up weighted to 31%.

This is one of the strongest cohorts that President Trump gained in 2024, but it is being ignored in this poll, and the people who did respond are getting enormous over-weighting (82% adjustment) which should have been a big red flag that more sampling was needed.

Consider the demographics of Trump's 2024 coalition:

• Non-college voters: Trump won by +14 points (56-42%) (2024 exit polls)
• High school only voters: Even more Republican (estimated R+16 to R+18)
• Young, nonwhite, non-college voters: Trump made historic gains in 2024

So, either:

1. The few who respond are unrepresentative
2. Weighting amplified the bias of those who responded
3. The loss of Trump support may be measurement error

In any case, I'd treat this poll as an outlier until we can see other polls with better sampling.

-PJ

[know.your.why]

As long as your wages have also increased (like mine has) I suppose food (esp meats) are affordable. If I was still at 2020 wages, not so much.

[millenial4freedom]

call me crazy, but it seems like the items perceived as most 'unaffordable' by Americans seem to have had the most amount of government interference

...must just be a strange coincidence. /s

[millenial4freedom]

and those same people, who constantly whine about the ‘greed’ of the private sector, earn six-figures annually in addition to generous pensions - all under guaranteed tenure and little-to-no responsibility for grading students’ exams/assignments (that’s what the TAs are for)

[ConservativeMind]

What channels do you watch?

[catnipman]

“Cars are affordable only because they offer 8-year loans. By the time you’re done paying for it, the car will be nearly worthless.”

in the 1970’s you were lucky if most cars lasted 3 years ... 8 years is a great improvement ... however, with many models of Honda or Toyota, you can generally expect an automobile to last 15 year or longer without major issues ... one good thing about older cars that work well but have lower book values is that registration and insurance costs are greatly reduced ..

[Organic Panic]

I love my30 year old Honda. But I need a pickup since my last one died after 280k miles.