Last year, a super PAC dedicated to electing House Democrats asked voters something that would shape the midterm cycle: Did they blame greedy corporations or corrupt, out of touch politicians for their economic problems?
Politicians, by a 2-to-1 margin.
The finding helped make corruption a central line of attack in the party’s campaign to regain control of Congress, fueling advertisements in battleground states across the country. Tying corruption to voters’ economic malaise, Democrats learned, gave new potency to a criticism of President Donald Trump that the party had struggled for years to make stick.
Trump provided an opening, repeatedly dismissing concerns about rising prices even as his own wealth ballooned and his allies profited from their proximity to the presidency. Meanwhile, his handling of the Justice Department’s files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein undermined the image he cultivated among his supporters as a political outsider determined to “drain the swamp” in Washington.
Democrats have seized on the contrast to paint not just Trump, but a host of Republican incumbents defending their congressional seats as enriching themselves while ordinary Americans struggled to make ends meet.
“They see politicians getting rich for themselves,” said C.J. Warnke, the communications director of the House Majority PAC, which conducted the research. “That’s going to piss a lot of people off.”
After the economy, corruption and health care costs drew the most Democratic ad spending. Last week alone in competitive races, Democrats spent $150 million on ads about corruption and $118 million on ads about health care, outspending Republicans roughly 3 to 1 on both issues.
Polls show voters have long viewed self-dealing as a problem in both parties, and Trump has demonstrated an unusual ability to evade the kinds of political consequences that typical accompany accusations a public official has accrued private benefits. This election cycle, however, even Republicans have increasingly come to see Trump as part of the problem. The share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who say Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself has risen from 22 percent last year to 34 percent today, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
Voters rank corruption among their leading concerns heading into the election in multiple polls, with Democrats enjoying an advantage on the issue. A Gallup poll released in September found 89 percent of Americans said corruption is widespread throughout the government, up 10 points from a year earlier. Half of likely voters trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle corruption, giving the party an 11-point advantage, according to an October New York Times/Siena poll.
Political strategists in both parties say a steady stream of stories about allegations of self-dealing in the Trump administration has helped keep corruption in the spotlight. Voters’ mounting frustrations over the cost of groceries, gas and other essentials gave those charges new resonance. Persistent inflation has outpaced wage growth, leaving many Americans feeling increasingly squeezed.
That combination allowed an issue that had been building to start “exploding,” said Adam Bozzi, a Democratic operative and adviser for Defend the Vote, a progressive PAC focused on protecting voting access. The group began briefing top Democrats in Washington and candidates in competitive House races last year on why they should prioritize a message linking affordability to corruption.
“Corruption has always been an issue, but it has been an issue as an ethical problem,” Bozzi said. “People are really connecting the outcome to their own well-being.”
Trump was seen by many voters in 2024 as a candidate who could take on elites benefiting from a corrupt system because of his promises to release the Epstein files, said Brent Buchanan, the founder and the CEO of the Republican research firm Cygnal. But his initial resistance to releasing the trove of documents undermined some supporters’ confidence in his willingness to take on the elites.
“When they see the issues haven’t been fixed, then you end up with it being believable that Republicans are not doing right things to fix corruption,” Buchanan said.
Trump has moved to address voters’ concerns, floating efforts to lower the cost of beef and diesel fuel and promising $5,000 checks for every American if Republicans retain control of Congress. But even some of his strongest supporters are skepticalthe checks will materialize, and economists say they would do little to offset broader financial challenges.
At the same time, Trump and his allies have faced a constant flurry of accusations they have financially benefited from the presidency. The Trump family has expanded its crypto business interests while Trump was in office, and the president made more than $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency in 2025, according to financial records.
“It’s the buildup and constant repetition of these stories that upset so many Americans,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist and president of North Star Opinion Research. “Tying corruption to the worries about inflation and the economy has given the corruption issue more salience and more juice.”
Allegations rolled in during the final week before the election: Kimberly Guilfoyle, the ambassador to Greece and former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., resigned after allegations she asked a political donor for $100,000 to pay her personal American Express bill. Trump admonished his top political advisers for advising the pro-Russian government of a territory in Bosnia called Republika Srpska. And reports surfaced that the Justice Department is reviewing accusations that Corey Lewandowski, who was a top aide to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, might have illegally profited from his unusual role in the department.
“I want my people to be honest, and if they’re not going to be honest, they have to be prosecuted,” Trump told reporters on Oct. 22, when asked about Lewandowski. “I view it as if people are not honest, they’re stealing from me as president.”
The Trump White House has pushed back on the Democratic attacks, pointing to its initiatives to root out waste and fraud within the U.S. government.
“President Trump has launched an all-out war on fraud across the entire federal government, holding criminals accountable and saving taxpayers billions of dollars,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said. “The Democrats in Congress have refused to do anything to stop waste, fraud and abuse in our government.”
The White House’s claims of its savings are far less than the initial promises that Trump’s ally Elon Musk made to save $2 trillion through cutting fraud and abuse.
‘Their Corruption is Costing Us’
Democrats’ corruption focus has been most apparent in the Texas Senate race, where state Rep. James Talarico (D) has hammered Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) with tens of millions of dollars in related ads.
But the party has broadly embraced the message, “Their Corruption is Costing Us.”
In Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, Democrats have attacked incumbent Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R) for making hundreds of stock trades that have generated millions of dollars while in office while costs have risen for Pennsylvania residents.
His opponent, Paige Cognetti, holds a package of raw meat aloft in a grocery store in one ad paid for by her campaign: “Chicken is up 30 percent and Congress keeps trading stocks, making bread for themselves while the middle class gets squeezed,” she said.
In a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ad in Michigan’s 4th Congressional District, Democratic candidate Sean McCann accused Republican incumbent Rep. Bill Huizenga of “taking thousands” from data center companies, utilities and Big Oil, and then letting those industries drive up prices.
“You feel it every day: Washington corruption has a price tag,” he says in the spot.
And in Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia), a potential 2028 presidential contender, has crystalized the message at his political rallies.
“While the crook president and his crook family rake in billions from around the world, you pay more for everything,” Ossoff said in a speech the Democratic Party clipped and widely circulated on social media.
Republican political strategists said that it is more challenging for the GOP to land corruption-focused attacks. The message is more effective when levied by outsiders challenging incumbents, but the party has tried, largely by targeting congressional stock trading.
GOP ads this cycle pan Democrats for blocking a bill that would limit Congress members’ stock trades. Democrats opposed the bill because Republicans attached it to sweeping restrictions on voter ID, and party leaders said it did not go far enough because it would allow members of Congress who already own stocks to continue to trade them and because it would not restrict the president and vice president.
Voters can mean wildly different things when they talk about corruption and who they view as corrupt, often shaped by their existing partisan views, said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog investigating government corruption.
“Corruption is an eye-of-beholder phenomenon,” Hedtler-Gaudette said.
The corruption messages have been most effective with the large swath of voters who supported Trump but don’t consider themselves strong Republicans, according to Buchanan, the Republican pollster.
In several interviews, Trump’s strongest supporters, especially those who have attended his rallies in the final weeks of the 2026 campaign, batted down accusations of corruption involving the Trump family and instead focused on allegations against Democrats.
Lee J. Rice, 62, of Willow, Alaska, dismissed concerns about Trump’s net worth growing in office or the business ventures he has launched since the 2024 election.
Rice, who had never donated to another politician before Trump entered the political stage, watched him on “The Apprentice” and simply accepts that “he’s a businessman.”
“I don’t feel he’s taking advantage of the nation,” Rice said. “But, you know, there’s others that do, sure.” Nancy Pelosi, he said, “left office with a lot of money.”
Natalie Allison, Liz Goodwin and Luke Connors contributed to this report.
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