For the past few years, Ailene Bitnar has listened to her customers at an Upper Peninsula convenience store complain about high grocery prices.

And she felt the pain herself.

Bitnar, the manager of Paradise Recreational Sports, has seen food prices skyrocket over the past two years – increases that she has been forced to pass on to customers. She says the store, located in a remote corner of the Upper Peninsula, now buys eggs for $5 a carton and sells them for $6.99.

“It’s the initial cost of the food and then the markup,” she explained.

But Bitnar hopes the economy will change now that Donald Trump has won the presidential election.

“My new favorite number is 47,” she said.

Campaigning on a message of transformation of a “an economic nightmare transformed into an economic miracle“, Trump brought down the blue wall and influenced people in swing states like Michigan. Frustration over high prices helped Trump win, even though experts say the president has little power to reduce food prices and some of his policies could worsen inflation.

“This election was decided based on economics,” said Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan.

Related: The economy is a political hot potato, but voters only see higher grocery bills

Strained budgets impact voters

Until November 5, voters regularly cite the economy as a significant concerneven if on paper everything is going well: inflation is falling, unemployment is low and wages are rising.

Yet prices remain high.

“The economy is growing, but voters saw a very different reality at the supermarket. That ended up influencing their decisions about who to support,” said David Ortega, a food economist at Michigan State University.

Trump was focused on this issue, repeatedly asking voters the old Ronald Reagan adage: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Meanwhile, political experts say Democrats — who have been hammering out data about an improving economy — have failed to recognize that voters are in trouble.

“Trump was very critical of the economy and the Democrats kept trying to defend the economy, so there was a little bit of tweeting,” said Nazita Lajevardi, a political science professor at the University of Michigan State. “It doesn’t recognize the real issues that are harming people.” »

Food prices are estimated to be 22% higher than four years ago. Surveys show that many Americans struggle to afford groceries. Nearly half of tenants spend too much on housing. And about 4 in 10 Michigan households live paycheck to paycheck.

The high cost of living was a major concern for Courtney Thomas, 41, when he voted in Flint last week.

“I know a lot of people are struggling,” he said. “Food prices have increased. The gas is turned up. I hope this makes a difference to some less fortunate people. »

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University, says that when “the perception of the economy is bad,” it ends up becoming a motivating topic in the voting booth.

Voters often punish whoever is in power, with James Carville saying during the 1992 presidential election, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

“All economists would agree that the president gets too much credit for a good economy and too much blame for a bad one,” Dulio said. “But it’s one of the main issues for which the public holds the president accountable.”

This didn’t just happen in the United States.

Inflation has been felt globally over the past two years as the economy recovered from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: blocked supply chains, strong consumer demand and rising prices. labor costs. Added to this is the war in Ukraine, severe droughts And deadly bird flu also drove up costs.

It’s clear that voters don’t like the higher prices, and the leaders holding the bag are now paying the price. In 10 major countriesthe incumbent parties were rejected.

“If you’re unhappy, you blame the people in power because you think they’re responsible, even though they may not have caused the problems,” Gordon said.

Trump’s plan to ‘make inflation disappear’ could make the situation worse

The problem is that prices tend to be sticky.

Regardless of who is in power, most food prices will not return to pre-pandemic levels because they generally do not deflate. Grocery costs are rising more slowly – a 1.2% increase this year compared to an 11% in 2022 – but Americans will likely feel the effects of this sudden jump for a few years.

“There is nothing the president of the United States can do in the short term to lower food prices or influence the inflation rate,” Ortega said.

Trump still channeled this economic frustration to win a second presidential term.

He told voters that “inflation would completely disappear” thanks to his plan to impose tariffs on imported goods and deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

But experts warn that these policies will likely have the opposite effect.

Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists outlined their concerns in a July letter saying Trump’s proposals could “revive” inflation, which has been “declining remarkably quickly.” It reached 2.1% in October after peaking at 9% two years ago.

Ortega says the policy to impose tariffs – taxes on imported goods – “will almost surely backfire,” leading to an increase in food prices. Similarly, he says the mass deportation plan would create “unintended consequences” by draining the farmworker workforce.

In the United States, approximately 40% of agricultural workers hired to harvest crops do not have legal status.

“If there is a sudden deportation of this workforce, it could cause significant disruptions in the agricultural sector, potentially leading to an increase in food prices,” Ortega said.

Democrats rely on working-class voters

Meanwhile, Harris’ economic agenda failed to appeal to voters.

Harris has pledged to provide tax credits to low-income families and provide assistance to first-time home buyers. It also launched a plan to combat price gouging to reduce food costs.

For Bitnar, who lives in what she calls a “Trump town,” those messages simply weren’t coming through. As the manager of a rural convenience store located about 55 miles north of the Mackinac Bridge, the focus on price gouging made no sense to her.

“We don’t do price gouging because we can’t even buy milk at the price Walmart sells it for,” she said.

Democrats now have to reckon with the growing number of working-class voters, a group that once made up their base, who chose Trump over Harris.

“People were very frustrated by the claim that the pace of inflation was slowing and the fact that this seemed tone-deaf to people struggling with the cost of living, housing and making ends meet.” , said Lajevardi.

After the elections, US Senator Bernie Sanders accused the Democratic Party to defend the “status quo” and abandon the working class. Democratic leader, US Representative Nancy Pelosi repelled by saying“We are the kitchen table, the party of the American working class.”

Related: Michigan remains a purple state, experts say. A change could come.

Exit poll conducted by Edison Research shows sharp partisan divisions on other key issues in Michigan.

Eighty percent of Trump voters surveyed in Michigan said the economy was their top concern, while 83 percent of Harris voters cited the state of democracy. Similarly, 89% of Trump voters said immigration was their top issue, while 65% of Harris voters cited abortion.

The war in Gaza also swayed voters in Michigan, where Arab Americans, a key part of the electorate, were frustrated with the Biden administration’s support for Israel. Dearborn, the largest Arab-majority city in the country, shifted his Democratic support by several years to vote for Trump.

Harris, linked to the administration in place, could not escape all these headwinds. And experts say that ultimately, voters were simply looking for change.

“They wanted to give someone else a chance,” Gordon said. “And they don’t necessarily seem to think, ‘Wow, Republicans have brilliant ideas.’ They just think they’ve had enough of the Democrats.”