In November, political experts and commentators largely agreed on one central lesson from the election: Democrats made meaningful electoral gains by focusing relentlessly on “affordability.” From childcare to energy bills to housing, voters rewarded candidates who spoke directly to the economic pressures shaping everyday life.
Since then, a lingering question has emerged. It is one thing to campaign on affordability, but can Democrats actually govern on affordability and then run for reelection on those results?
In Albany a few weeks ago, New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s State of the State address marked one of the earliest attempts to answer that question. Rather than treating affordability as just another item on a policy laundry list, Hochul placed it squarely at the center of her agenda. “I am proud to lead the fight to protect communities and build an economy that works for all,” she said. “Today I’m here to tell you how we continue that fight, and it starts with making life more affordable.”
To explain why she was streamlining the environmental review process for housing and infrastructure projects, she highlighted how delays and red tape were the main culprits for families facing skyrocketing rents and home prices. She pledged to rein in New York’s car insurance rates, among the highest in the country, and a pocketbook issue that many New Yorkers are familiar with. She zeroed in on holding utility companies accountable for soaring energy bills, while underscoring why expanding nuclear energy – thus the state’s energy supply — can help stabilize energy prices. Most significantly for families, she unveiled a plan for free, universal childcare statewide, aimed at reducing one of the biggest monthly expenses facing parents and making it easier for households to afford work, housing, and everyday necessities.
But policy details alone do not win elections, particularly in today’s political environment. Increasingly, voters are making political judgments less on statistics and more on lived experience, what we colloquially call “vibes.” Do things feel better? Do our elected officials understand what families are going through?
And most important for a campaign, how do you create those “vibes” that resonate with voters?
The truth is, it’s not a fluke — it requires consistent, disciplined messaging and thoughtful communications planning. Here are three steps we’d recommend taking to curate these “vibes”:
- Make Messaging Relatable: To engage voters, you need an easy-to-understand message. Rather than talking about esoteric concepts, you need to reach people by providing solutions to what matters most to them that they can relate to, like making life easier to live by tackling affordability.
- Get Out of the Office and Into the Community: People who get elected know their communities and the people within them. That means candidates or elected leaders can’t run their campaigns in isolation; they have to meet and understand their voters. While helpful, this goes beyond polling alone and comes down to meeting people where they are.
- Creating the Surround Sound Effect: It’s not enough to communicate on a single platform these days. To ensure voters hear from you and are immersed in your message, you need a multi-platform strategy that creates a “surround sound” effect. From traditional media (op-eds and news stories), to social media (Instagram, TikTok, X), to new media (content creators, endorsements, brand-creator partnerships) and paid media (TV, print, digital, and sponsored advertising), a sustained and strategic presence across each of these leaves the largest impression on whether voters think things are heading in the right direction.
Vibes pose a real test for Democrats like Governor Hochul, who is running for re-election this November. Hochul has amassed a record of achievements that are broadly popular with New Yorkers, including inflation refund checks, a ban on cell phones in high schools, and free universal school lunches. The central question is not whether these policies poll well, but whether New Yorkers are feeling their impact, or believe they will feel their impact, in their daily lives in the near future.
Recent polling suggests the answer may be inching toward “yes.” The Siena Poll, which tracks – among other trends – whether New Yorkers believe the state is headed in the right direction or on the wrong track, showed a notable shift in December. For the first time in more than six months, more respondents said the state was on the right track (44 percent) than the wrong track (41 percent). While still narrow, that’s the first time we’ve seen this flip in over six months.
It is also an important metric to watch as the state’s legislative session continues through the first half of the year and campaign season ramps up toward November.
More succinctly, Hochul will need to ensure that New Yorkers feel those results, creating the positive “vibes” voters increasingly use to judge elected leaders.
With her reelection campaign approaching, Hochul will be one of the first Democratic governors to test whether an affordability‑focused governing agenda can translate into electoral success. How she frames — and sells — that message may well serve as a blueprint for how Democrats try to run on affordability heading into 2028.
Bryan Lesswing is a Senior Vice President at SKDK and leads the firm’s Albany, NY, office.