President Donald Trump appears to be treating the 2026 midterm elections as a rerun of the 2024 presidential campaign. Judging by his rhetoric, you would hardly know that Joe Biden left the White House 21 months ago.

A Reuters review published in late September found that the president had invoked his predecessor almost 900 times in nine months — roughly three times a day — across nearly 200 events and interviews and 190 Truth Social posts. The economy came up more than any other subject. And in Trump's telling, if prices are too high, Biden must be to blame.

The strategy — claiming credit for positive achievements while pinning anything negative on his predecessor — was evident early in Trump's second term. But 18 months on, the president still insists that affordability concerns are either a “con job by the Democrats” or were “caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden administration.”

The question is whether anyone beyond the Republican base believes him.

It is easy to see why Trump reaches for this script. In 2024, voters consistently trusted him over Biden on the economy. An ABC News/Ipsos poll that May found 46% trusted Trump to handle the economy against 32% for Biden, and a 44%-to-30% edge on inflation. YouGov polling from mid-2024 found that on 23 of 25 national problems tested, more people approved of Trump's record in office than of Biden's. Voters believed prices had risen on Biden's watch, and they blamed him for it.

The blame has changed hands

Two years on, the blame has transferred to the current occupant of the Oval Office. The pattern should hardly surprise Trump and his advisers, who might have taken note of the 2022 midterms, when Biden's approval on the economy had sunk to a dismal 28%. Similarly, a majority of Americans now blame Trump.

This matters. A Reuters/Ipsos poll at the end of August found that 47% of registered voters said the economy was the single most important factor in their midterm vote — and 71% of Americans disapproved of Trump's handling of it. By late September, Reuters/Ipsos put his approval on the issue at just 17%, with more Republicans disapproving than approving for the first time. That poll was something of an outlier, but other surveys consistently place Trump's approval on the economy in the low 30s.

The problem for the administration, and for Republican candidates whose fortunes are tied to it, is that much of the public does not think it needs a profound understanding of economics to trace inflation back to Trump's second-term policies. As the authors argue in their book, Trump v Biden, the administration has doubled down on the key themes of the first term, notably restricting immigration and imposing tariffs.

According to Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin, Trump now has a net approval rating of -12 points on immigration, traditionally one of his stronger issues. On trade, which is more directly tied to prices, his net approval rating is -29 points.

Trump's first term imposed a range of new tariffs, particularly on China, many of which Biden retained. Trump's second term has set about a significant, if haphazard, expansion of that trade protectionism. In April 2025, an executive order announced a new tariff regime on what Trump declared “Liberation Day.”

Judging the exact impact of the second-term tariff regime is difficult, as levels have fluctuated and some tariffs have been imposed only to be lifted again. But Republican candidates have shied away from talking about tariffs, and polls throughout the year have found that most Americans believe they have hurt rather than helped the economy.

On tariffs, Trump was at least delivering on a campaign promise. More confounding to his supporters was the war with Iran, which came after Trump had promised not to start one. As he famously said on the campaign trail: “They said: 'He will start a war.' I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars.” Seven months of conflict with Iran sit uneasily with that pledge. And, worse for Republicans, many voters have drawn a direct line from the conflict to rising gasoline and diesel prices at home. In early October, the Pew Research Center found that just 33% approved of Trump's handling of the conflict, while 77% expected it to last at least six more months. The chief objection was cost: 73% of Americans were extremely or very concerned about higher fuel prices.

A referendum on Trump, not Biden

The Trump era has broken many norms of politics, but political gravity still exists. Midterms are usually a verdict on the sitting president, and this one looks no different. Pew puts Trump's approval at 30%, the lowest of his second term and eight points below Biden's 38% at the same stage in 2022. Nearly two-thirds of voters (63%) say Trump is a factor in their vote, and 44% see their ballot as a vote against him — well above the 36% who said the same of Biden four years ago. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll gives Democrats a 47%-to-35% lead on the generic congressional ballot.

The irony is worth noting. Trump returned to power by persuading voters that Biden was out of touch with their economic reality. Twenty-one months in, he faces the same charge. Blaming a predecessor has a shelf life — and for most voters, it appears to have expired. Whatever happens on November 3, the result will be read as a judgement on Trump's presidency.

Clodagh Harrington, Lecturer in American Politics, University College Cork, and Alex Waddan, Associate Professor in American Politics and American Foreign Policy, University of Leicester. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.