Just days before the midterm elections, two sets of figures released within days of each other describe the same mood from opposite directions. A Reuters/Ipsos poll puts Donald Trump’s approval rating at 32%, the lowest of his presidency. A study by the non-profit Food & Water Watch finds that US households pay 62% more for drinking water than they did a decade ago. One is a measure of political sentiment, the other a measure of household costs, and they do not prove a direct link. But read together they show the kind of pressure that tends to shape midterm elections: bills that keep rising faster than incomes, and a growing share of voters who attribute that strain to the people in charge.
A President Losing the Voters Who Elected Him
The polling picture is clear about direction. Trump’s 32% is the latest in a run of record lows; mid-August Reuters/Ipsos polling had him at 33%, and the new reading goes below it. The more important detail is who is leaving. Trump is losing support among independents and Latinos, two groups that backed him in 2024. An NBC News/Telemundo poll released Sunday found that 59% of Latino voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, double the number who supported the party two years ago, and only 24% of Hispanic Americans approve of Trump’s performance.
Asked about the polls, Trump said, “I’m doing great,” and blamed CNN and the media. Meanwhile, even conservative states are beginning to show the loss of support, and some Republicans, among them Florida’s Maria Elvira Salazar, have started to put distance between themselves and the president on issues such as immigration as they try to hold local support. The same coverage notes that Americans are souring on the economy, on the war with Iran, and on other issues they attribute to the administration. That mention of the economy is the thread that connects the poll to the household bills.
The Bill That Rose Without Headlines
Of all household costs, the water bill is among the least noticed. It arrives monthly, it is hard to avoid, and it rarely generates the public anger that gasoline or grocery prices do. The Food & Water Watch study, based on 2025 billing data from the 500 largest community water systems serving about 155 million people, shows how much it has changed. The average household using 60,000 gallons a year paid $531. Consumer prices rose 39% between 2015 and 2025, while water bills rose 62%, about 1.6 times faster. Groceries rose 30% and eggs 28%, so water outpaced the food prices that dominate complaints about the cost of living by more than two to one. Over 2014 to 2024, bills also grew 19% faster than the national median household income.
Averages hide large differences. Annual bills ranged from $133 to $1,416 depending on the system. New Hampshire saw bills jump 177% over the decade, Oregon 114%, and West Virginia 95%. Corporate-owned utilities charged the average household $823 a year, against $494 for publicly owned ones, a 67% gap, and all 25 of the cheapest systems were publicly owned. Private-water trade groups reply that regulated companies often run customer-assistance programs, and that rate comparisons can miss that help. Even so, the pattern is that where a household lives, and who owns its utility, determines what it pays for an essential service.
Where the Two Stories Meet
The link between the poll and the study is not that water bills explain Trump’s approval. It is that they illustrate the same condition: a household budget squeezed by costs that grow faster than pay. For the poorest fifth of households the squeeze is most severe. In 93% of the systems studied, water bills exceeded 1.5% of income for those households, and the burden reached about 11% of income in West Virginia and roughly 20% in Puerto Rico. Voters in that position are the ones most likely to tell pollsters that they are unhappy with the economy and to hold the administration responsible.
There is also a policy connection. The study’s authors blame federal disinvestment along with corporate practices and climate change, and the American Water Works Association, which represents utilities supplying roughly 80% of North America’s drinking water, points to the cost of replacing ageing infrastructure and meeting stricter regulation. Its projection shows how the pressure could grow: if communities rely only on water-bill revenue, the average annual household bill would rise from $429 in 2025 to $969 by 2050 in 2025 dollars, and 53.5 million households would exceed the 1.5% affordability threshold. The funding choices that decide whether that happens, federal support, local assistance programs, and who pays for repairs and pollution cleanup, are exactly the kind of questions that Congress, which is on the ballot in November, will answer.
What It Means for November
For Republicans, the combination is difficult. A president at 32% is a weak asset for candidates in competitive districts, and the loss of independent and Latino support narrows the margin they need. Candidates who distance themselves from him on immigration risk losing the base, while those who stay close risk the swing voters. Concern about everyday costs offers no easy escape, because it is not a single issue the party can address with one message.
For Democrats, the opportunity is evident but not guaranteed. The 59% of Latino voters preferring a Democratic Congress is a sharp change from two years ago, but it is a preference in a poll, not a vote, and it can move again before November. The broader lesson of the two datasets is that affordability is no longer confined to the usual headline categories. When even the water bill has outrun inflation and incomes for a decade, the sense that costs are rising out of reach is not a matter of perception alone, and a president whose approval is at a record low has little room to dismiss it as the work of the media.
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