Ted Cruz Says Republicans Didn't Grasp Voters' Economic Pain

Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, said his party lost Tuesday's midterms partly because its politicians waved off voters' anger over the cost of living, and that "too many Republican politicians seem like they didn't understand or they didn't care."

Cruz recorded the statement Wednesday and replayed it a couple of days later on his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. It follows a night when Democrats won every statewide race in Texas and, by Cruz's count, now hold 54 Senate seats, with Mississippi and Alaska still undecided. He supported his argument with seven statistics on household strain. Some of them hold up. Others are misdated or misstated.

Ted Cruz Faults GOP on Cost of Living

"The top issue, cost of living, is very real. Too many in politics dismissed it," Cruz said. "They pointed to the macro numbers showing the stock market soaring, median income at record highs, and poverty at record lows. Those data are true, but they don't tell all of the story."

He cited Kansas exit polling that he said ranked cost of living as the top issue, named by 30.6 percent of voters, ahead of corruption and the cost of the Iran war. He also pointed at the president's trade policy: "Tariffs have made everything too expensive."

His co-host Ben Ferguson said voters "didn't care where the stock market was. It was, can they put food on the table?" Cruz replied that "it may be an easy problem to fix, but it's not a quick problem to fix."

The public mood matches his diagnosis. Just 29.7 percent of Americans approve of Donald Trump's handling of the economy and 67.5 percent disapprove, according to PolitiKool's polling average.

How Ted Cruz's Statistics Hold Up

Cruz's macro figures are largely accurate. The Census Bureau reported in September that real median household income reached $87,460 in 2025, the highest on record. The official poverty rate fell 0.5 points to 10.2 percent; the record lows were in the child and Hispanic poverty rates.

His hardship figures come from different sources and different years, so they do not form a single trend:

The plasma estimate comes from Peter Jaworski, author of the Blood Plasma Quarterly newsletter, and it counts donations rather than donors. Cruz's line about "200,000 Americans every single day with a needle in their arm" matches 75 million donations spread across a year. But many regular sellers give twice a week, so the number of people is smaller.

Electricity Prices Up About 31 Percent

Cruz's claim that "the average American's electricity bill went up 30% in the last five years" is broadly right. The average U.S. residential price rose from 13.15 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2020 to 17.23 cents in 2025, according to Energy Information Administration data. That is an increase of about 31 percent before adjusting for inflation. Actual bills also depend on how much power a household uses.

What Comes Next for Republicans

Cruz said Republicans lost blue-collar, young, Hispanic, rural and evangelical voters. He urged the party to run on Trump accounts and the school choice tax credit, both of which he authored. He also predicted that Democrats will overreach: "I think 2028 is going to be a really good Republican year."

The Senate seats Democrats flipped Tuesday will not come up again until 2032. Until then, Cruz's argument is that Republicans have to change how they talk to the voters they lost. "That is very real pain from real Americans," he said.