Election 2026: Affordability

ELECTION 2026 · EDITION 3

Affordability

The buzzword that swallowed the 2026 election

Welcome back to CommonWealth Beacon‘s Election 2026 newsletter run.

It all comes back to affordability.

Gov. Maura Healey, looking likely to skate into her second term come November, has a delicate tightrope to walk: acknowledge that cost-of-living is the major issue concerning voters, and tout the ways she can try to address it without being blamed for the crisis. It’s a precarious position that her Republican challenger is eagerly hammering.

Massachusetts housing permits lag other states, home electric costs remain high, health care spending keeps rising, and child care costs are among the highest in the nation.

And that laundry list of expenses has consequences. Between 2020 and 2025, the state experienced a net loss of about 182,000 residents to outmigration. In April, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce released polling data that showed slightly more than a quarter of young residents in Greater Boston — one of the priciest regions of the state — planned to leave the region in the next five years.

The culprit: cost, particularly housing costs, which are among the highest in the nation according to state data.

When a UMass Amherst poll asked voters in August about the major issues they want their elected leadership to address, cost of living rose to the top.

“Bay Staters not only see affordability as a pressing problem but also want Gov. Healey and the state Legislature to do something about it, with a whopping 39 percent of respondents identifying the cost of living as the one issue they want these elected officials to tackle in the coming year,” said Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the poll.

As the midterms approach, he said, “Republican candidates may want to center affordability in their campaigns as a way to connect directly with voters’ most pressing concerns and potentially upset Democratic incumbents.”

A CommonWealth Beacon poll conducted by the MassINC Polling group in September asked likely voters about their high-priority areas when deciding how to vote in November. Thirty percent said inflation and cost of living.

This economic anxiety has shaped the primaries as well as the general election. A dispute over Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s proposal to reduce property taxes for Bostonians, which hit a dead end in the state Senate, prompted her to back two unsuccessful challenges to the Boston senators who bucked her plan.

Had it not been tossed by the state’s highest court on a technicality, a ballot measure that would have cut income taxes was expected to pass, though legislative leaders warned that it would pose a ticking revenue bomb.

“There aren’t many people out there that’re going to go to the polls and … not vote to give themselves a tax cut,” Speaker Ron Mariano said in March. “So we think it’s going to pass and creates a whole set of other problems for us that we have to deal with.”

Another ballot measure that would make it more likely that the state would have to issue refunds to taxpayers is still set to go before voters in November.

At the top of the ballot, both Healey and Minogue have centered affordability in their campaigns, though they’ve framed it differently. Minogue says one-party state government is to blame and has called for tax cuts, a budget audit, and a gas tax suspension.

The sitting governor is spending more space in campaign materials looking back than laying out a plan forward. Healey has pointed to actions she’s already taken — capping copays, ordering utility refunds, signing a 2023 tax cut. With winter heating costs looming, she has proposed a two-month gas tax suspension of her own this fall and asked Eversource, National Grid, and Unitil to begin issuing ratepayer refunds for a share of the utilities’ profits immediately rather than waiting until the federal deadline next May.

Housing costs — routinely cited as the most stinging pain point in polling about affordability — have skyrocketed in Massachusetts over the past two and a half decades. According to Zillow’s home price index, median home prices in the Bay State have jumped 73 percent since 2000.

The state estimates that the average single family home price cost $610,000 in 2024, which would take a salary of about $162,000 a year to afford. Beacon Hill leaders have pointed to major policy shifts like the MBTA Communities multifamily housing law as an example of clearing the way for more units, but such proposals have run into forceful objection from cities and towns who want to retain control over their local character.

One measure on the ballot, Question 7, is aimed at making it easier to build smaller, affordable single-family homes in more places. Healey has thrown her support behind the measure.

And the increasingly dire cost of health care is hitting residents hard. Massachusetts has the highest family health insurance premiums in the country, according to the state Health Policy Commission.

Healey has leaned on recommendations from her affordability working group, including backing efforts to direct more money toward the beleaguered primary care system and stabilize in- and out-of-network costs. Minogue says he is focused on reducing waste in the system and prioritizing community-based care.

Meanwhile, the national environment is intruding into all of these affordability discussions. Democrats are pointing to the Trump administration’s changes to Medicaid eligibility rules that could send hundreds of thousands off the rolls in the Bay State. Plus, tariff disputes and pervasively high inflation are keeping the cost of building new housing at a premium even if state lawmakers manage to ease the permitting process.

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