Does the Price of Gas Decide the Vote?

Gas is $4.27 a week before Election Day, and politicians from Columbus to the White House are acting like it matters. The record on whether pump prices move votes is more mixed.

By Rich Vandall · Oct. 27, 2026

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A week before the Nov. 3 election, the national average for regular gas is $4.27 a gallon, up nearly $1.30, or 43%, since the war with Iran began in February, ABC News reported Oct. 22, citing AAA. Analysts told ABC that prices won't fall below $4 before Election Day. "Short answer: No," said Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at Dow Jones Energy.

Politicians are acting as if that number could decide races. Voters say prices are on their minds. Whether pump prices actually change how people vote is harder to show.

What voters are saying

• Cost of living tops the list. In an AP-NORC poll taken Oct. 8–12, 85% of adults said the economy was among the most important issues in their vote and 84% said the cost of living. Sixty-four percent named the war with Iran. Seventy-nine percent disapproved of how President Donald Trump is handling the cost of living. The poll of 1,119 adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
• Gas, by name. In a New York Times/Siena poll of 3,494 likely voters taken Oct. 12–19, 73% disapproved of Trump's handling of gas prices and 24% approved, Newsweek reported. The same poll found Democrats ahead 52% to 41% on the generic ballot for the U.S. House.
• Energy ranks lower than the economy. A Pew Research Center survey published Oct. 8 found 84% of registered voters called the economy very important to their vote. Fifty-four percent said the same of energy policy.

Do gas prices really move votes?

Researchers have found a link between gas prices and how people rate presidents, but a weaker one in recent years.

Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics compared inflation-adjusted gas prices with Gallup presidential approval. From 1977 to 2025 he found a correlation of −0.47, meaning approval tended to fall as gas rose. But from 2009 to 2025 the correlation was 0.07, close to no relationship at all, he wrote in January. He suggested approval ratings have become so locked in by partisanship that even everyday costs barely move them.

Ross Burkhart, a political scientist at Boise State University, found a "moderate correlation" between gas prices and approval of the national government in both the U.S. and Canada, and survey evidence that in the U.S. the effect depends on a person's party, the university reported in February 2025.

Recent elections show the same mixed picture. The party holding the White House lost ground in each of the last five federal elections, whether gas was cheap or expensive:

The EIA's weekly national average for regular gasoline in the week of each election, adjusted to September 2026 dollars with the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) by The Despoiler. The 2026 figure isn't adjusted because October inflation figures aren't out.

In 2022, gas hit a record $5.01 in June, then eased to about $3.80 by Election Day. In today's dollars, that election-week price was $4.27, the same as now. The president's party still lost the House. In 2020, gas was near its lowest in years and the incumbent president lost anyway.

Acting like it matters anyway

Whatever the research says, officials in both parties are treating the pump price as a political issue this fall.

• In Columbus. Ohio lawmakers passed a 90-day suspension of the state gas tax, Senate Bill 475, in late September. FOX19 reported it would cut nearly 39 cents a gallon from regular and 47 cents from diesel, about $6 to $10 a fill-up for most drivers, with $725 million moved from state reserves to cover road funding. As an emergency measure, it needed a two-thirds vote. Democrats called it an election-year stunt. "Is it the Ohio citizens or is it the Republican gubernatorial candidate?" asked Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson, D-Toledo. Rep. Gary Click, a Republican from House District 88, answered that "we don't stop working just because there's an election coming up."
• In Washington. President Trump wrote on Oct. 22 that "Iran is doing everything they can to drive up the price of Oil prior to the U.S. Midterm Election," CBS News reported. The administration authorized a 400,000-barrel emergency release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is at its lowest level since 1982, Reuters reported. In 2022, President Joe Biden drew down the reserve before that year's midterms.

Even with Ohio's tax suspended, the state's average was $4.41 a gallon on Oct. 23, above the national average, The Center Square reported.

What the pump price can and can't tell you

About half the price of a gallon is the cost of crude oil, which trades on a world market, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This year the biggest force on that price has been fighting around the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about a fifth of the world's oil. Our chart of 10 years of gas prices, by administration, shows how much of the swing came from wars and crises.

Voters can still hold officials responsible for how they respond: whether they tap reserves, cut taxes, pursue a ceasefire or keep fighting. Those are choices on the ballot. The price on the sign is set by much more than any one of them.

AI tools gathered and sorted the records for this story, checked the math and wrote a first draft. Rich Vandall rewrote, checked and edited it. How we report.