Gas at the pump costs 40% more than it did before the Iran war began in February, according to the Energy Information Administration. And whether you’re a die-hard Democrat or red-blooded Republican or somewhere in between, everyone pays directly or indirectly for that hike.
Historically, this would be awful news for the White House occupant. Political scientists seem to agree that, unlike some trends that preoccupy pundits, gas prices really do move the needle on presidential approval.
Gasoline is a substantial part of the typical family’s budget, of course, but its real influence may lie in its simplicity. As Northwestern University’s Laurel Harbridge-Yong said on Matt Grossmann’s “The Science of Politics” podcast, you drive by gas stations with enormous price signs all the time. If you have a gas-powered car, you fill up regularly, so you have a common point of comparison. And, unlike with groceries where the long receipt obfuscates individual changes, you watch your wallet empty as your car fills up.
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In a 2016 book chapter, an all-star team of Harbridge-Yong and co-authors Jon Krosnick of Stanford University and Jeffrey Wooldridge of Michigan State University assembled three decades of presidential approval ratings, compared them to gas-price data, and found that every 10-cent rise in gas prices led to as much as a 0.6 percentage-point drop in the president’s approval rating. That held true even after controlling for food-and-beverage inflation, unemployment and presidential scandals. Simply put, voter sentiment often follows the gas gauge.
In the years since, other scholars have found similar trends. American Politics Research analysis shows that people living in places with longer car commutes are more likely to punish the president’s party for rising gas prices.
In an apparent effort to blunt this poll penalty in the upcoming midterms, President Donald Trump has often tried to justify the higher prices.
“So I just say this, so for you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline,” he told the crowd at an event this month on Long Island, “just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have … a nuclear weapon. So remember that, when you have to pay a little bit more.”
And support for the president does seem to cloud our views on the price surge. A recent YouGov poll found 32% of Republicans said gas prices were going up a lot, compared with 60% of Democrats.
In reality, since the war began in February, pump prices have leapt more than a dollar in both the reddest and bluest counties, with little variation based on politics, according to data from AAA and OPIS, the oil-price geniuses at Dow Jones. (The exception is Indiana, which now has the lowest gas prices in the nation after Republican Gov. Mike Braun suspended the state’s gas tax of about 60 cents a gallon.)
But, as our colleague Thomas Burr pointed out, it’s not just the change in price that determines how much gas prices hit your wallet. It’s how much you drive.
Seen through that lens, the initial results look pretty simple: The pain falls more heavily on Trump’s base. About 87% of workers in the Trumpiest fifth of the country commute by car, according to our analysis of the American Community Survey. That’s almost 40% more than the fifth of the country that went most heavily for Kamala Harris in 2024.
We can blame much of the gap on the urban-rural divide. Rural regions that went for Harris tend to drive a fair bit as well, but they’re rarer than rural red counties.
But gas prices can vary by well over a dollar per gallon depending on where you live, so isn’t it possible that, while Democrats tend to live in areas where people drive less, they also pay more per gallon?
Yes! We estimate Americans living in the bluest fifth of the country pay almost 20% more per gallon, extrapolating from data from AAA.
So, that raises the ultimate question: Does the higher price in Democratic-leaning counties offset the fact that they tend to drive less?
It’s tricky to account for the actual miles driven in each county. The best source might be 2017 data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which — while stale — tends to agree with more recent (albeit spottier) data from other sources.
If we use that data to account for the miles driven by households in each county, combined with spending data from the Energy Information Administration, we find that households in the reddest fifth of America still spend about 30% more on gasoline in a typical year than their friends in the bluest areas.
And if you look at it as a share of income — to account for the fact that city jobs tend to pay more — households in the reddest areas shell out about twice as much of their paychecks as their bluest buddies.
That may be part of why even Republicans seem to be souring on the Trump economy.
“Republicans saw a pretty big decrease in sentiment this month,” said Joanne Hsu, director of the widely watched University of Michigan Survey of Consumers. “It’s the lowest we’ve seen since the start of this administration.”
When respondents are asked to explain their answers, she said, everybody is far more likely to point to gas prices these days, but Republicans remain a bit less likely to cite them specifically. It’s an echo of the YouGov poll above — Republicans don’t see gas prices rising as fast, even though they’re hit hardest at the pump.
But is it just partisan wishful thinking?
Hsu had another explanation. Later in their survey, they ask where folks expect gas prices to go in the next year. Democrats and independents both thought they’d keep on climbing, while Republicans were the only group that expected gas to get cheaper.
“Republicans are still giving the president a little latitude on that,” Hsu said, “because there’s a belief that as soon as the war is over, gas prices are going to come down.”
“If you think it’s just a short-term pinch, you might have a higher tolerance for it,” she added. “You can stomach it because you don’t think it’s going to last.”
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