The gas price vote

it's about gas prices.

Guys, don't even get me started on, guys. I only want to film my gas tank no more.

“I'll get you to the country at now, gas $4 a gallon, you know?”

If you have one issue, you will one politicians to focus on, what would it be? Gas prices, gas prices, it's bad. Gas prices are way up since the U.S. launched, it's war with Iran, but does a little pain at the pump actually affect how people vote? And what if gas is still $4, come November? Is that game over for Donald Trump and the Republicans? That's this week on America, actually. Let's dig in.

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“But it's been unclear at least to this point. Who they blame for the higher prices?”

And whether the higher prices are going to affect their vote in the November midterm elections. Additionally, the oil will go down rapidly for certain awards all. President Trump has asked the American public to be patient with higher gas prices, and has argued that they will go down as soon as the war with Iran is over. Whenever that is. But the numbers will tell you, the American people's patience is growing thin

with this administration. The average price of gas has hovered around $4 since the spring and summer. And that's up a full dollar from where gas prices were just this February. Before the war with Iran started. But to gas prices actually affect how people vote in the November midterms, we went to an important congressional district in Pennsylvania to find out. "I'm going to show you something, look at these gas prices, every ticklish, and they just keep going

up. That's not good." Later in the show, we talked to a presidential historian who tells us how much gas prices have mattered in elections in the past and puts our current moment into context. "We're on our way to Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is the biggest city in Pennsylvania's 7th congressional district. Now, Pennsylvania's 7th is one of the most competitive districts in the country, and it's in the region of the state, Eastern Pennsylvania, that has several vertical

congressional districts when it comes to who's going to control the house in November." So why not go to some gas stations in Allentown and ask people how much our gas prices affecting their wallet and how much will affect who they vote for in November? Let's go. Now, we've heard a lot of people talking about gas prices this summer. Have they been on your radar like on the scale of 1 to 10? How would you rate how much they've affected your wallet this summer?

A lot. I don't drive as much. Now, when we think about gas prices, like, "Who do you blame for it going up?" I blame the government for everything. You blame the president? I blame the president because he indicated to us he's going to drop all these costs. I know it can't happen overnight, but when is it going to happen? It's outrageous. Did you vote for him to cast? Yes, I did. And did you vote from on the premise that stuff like

gas would be lower? I voted for him with his promises to American people and I think he's let us down. Which would you say is the biggest broken promise for you? What gives you the sense of let down? Is it the prices? The controlling of the prices? Got it. Has skyrocket. And I just feel it's not fair to those retired people and younger people. We can't survive. Yeah. Tell me

vacation. Not expensive ones, but the budget for that, I have to take away from utility bills,

oil bills, medical bills. I have to just take away. My main objective is roof over our head, pay our bills, and then what's left? But there's hardly anything left out of anything left. Yeah. My last question would be, like, he mentioned Trump. Now, does this affect how you think about Republicans going forward? Like, we have a midterm election coming out. We have other things. Or do you think this is just the father of the people in there right now? I really don't know

which way to go or what to do. Uh huh. You feel torn. Who is telling the truth? Uh huh. And who is going to represent us and do something about it? Talk is cheap. Uh huh. But let's do something about it. Well, this is the, what will be the number one thing you

“will want? Either party to do price control prices. Yes. Got it. Are you some of who votes?”

Yes, I do vote. Uh huh. Do things like gas prices affect how you think about who you're going vote for? I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, I'm not driving to the White House, but

gas prices is something that needs to be reflected on because it's a daily essential in everybody's lives.

Yeah. Do you mind if they feel? No, not at all. Great. When you think about the reasons why they've gone up, is there anybody that you blame for the rise in gas prices? Well, we all know it's the crisis in the least. We know that. If you could rate what's at the top of your priority list, when you make a choice between D and R, as someone who says they're in the middle, what is at the high of what helps you make that decision? What's the top of your

priority list? The economy. Yeah, basically. Yes. And what does that mean to you? Like housing, gas, like what piece of the economy? Because that's a big, it's a big thing. Well, that is all, it's all, it's all the, it's all the, it's all the. When we say gas prices, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Say gas prices? I mean, essential. We all drive, we don't have public transportation

this area, so we're all subjected to the price of what it's going to be. And this summer,

it's moved a lot. Has it changed? How you got to go about your life or work? Because gas prices have gone up? I would say if the situations were different, and we actually had, like, public transportation, it probably would. But since I have to commute to work every single day, I have to pay my bills. I have to pay the gas. So you have no other option. Is there anyone

“we blame for the rise of gas prices? I think it's pretty obvious, answer to that. You tell me,”

I mean, look at the way that things have gone since February. I think you can make a contrast to how things went back in 2022 when we went to, well, we didn't go to war with Ukraine, but when Ukraine went, got attacked by Russia. Yeah, the last time we saw that kind of big declaration, yeah. So how should we think about this? President Trump told us he was going to lower gas prices. He told us he was going to lower grocery bills. And here we are with higher

gas, like a year or so in, like, I don't know if you're someone who voted for him or supported him, but I'm like, what should we think about that contradiction? Well, he's a complete fraud. You know what I mean? I mean, I mean, it's obvious. I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say that, I mean, I think that we have President Trump as a direct result of some of the past administrations, and just sheer unhappiness with the way that things are going or the things that way that things

went. And I think that now President Trump is a consequence of maybe being okay with status quo

“for too long, but I think it's quite obvious now at this point that, I mean, the jig is up and that”

we're clearly not being represented by somebody who has our best interests. The last thing I'm saying is when you look ahead, is there anything, is there like, do you think Democrats help things like gas prices? Like, do you have any confidence in anybody in the landscape to say, hey, if this person was an office, things will be different. I would say it depends who their funding is coming from, because that's the biggest thing for you.

I don't think it matters if there are a Democrat or a Republican, if they're taking money from lobbies like APEC, got to wonder, you know, the party doesn't seem to matter. It's like, you know, are they who, who is their campaign financing coming from? Is it a real grassroots, you know, campaign where they're actually getting donations from people, rather than big, big packs, big corporations. Rather than looking at DRR, you're looking at where does your money

come from, and are you going to fight for a little guy? 100%. Are you from Alan's County from around here? Alan's County. I get a lot of it right now is because of the war, but I just saw the morning on the news that oil prices have gone down. So that's, that's a good sign. Yep. It is being linked to the war. Now, is that something that you're willing to pay a higher price for the cost of what, you know, the president saying is trying to make some people say,

yes, because our president is actually doing something about Iran. He's not, you know, he's not sugar coating it. It's something we need to do, and in the long run, it's going to be better for everybody. And I just want to be clear. And that's something you're willing to pay a higher gas price for. Yes. Does that have a timeline? Does that willingness run now? Then at any point, if those prices are still high, come into the summer,

we need to, we need to make sure Iran doesn't make a nuclear bomb or anything like that.

You know, we have to look out for America, and this president's doing that. Mm-hmm. Okay. It's been going up all summer. Has it changed the way you go about your job, or your life? Yeah, you're going around. It does. It does. It does. Because I drive, I do deliver, which for a living. Uh-huh. And I got to put plus on my other vehicle.

“Mm-hmm. And that's more expensive, flat out as a guy. And you're saying, because you have to put”

the plus in the vehicle, and that has gone up, it's changed how you have to drive around. Yeah, yeah, I really don't go nowhere. Mm-hmm. Um, who do you blame for those higher prices? The government.

So we just finished talking to people in gas stations in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The central seed of Pennsylvania's seventh congressional district. And we heard everything, a universal agreement that gas prices are too high, and it's affecting folks' lives. But also a blame centrally on the president, even though we heard a couple of people who defend them. But let's put this all into context and understand how gas prices affects this November election and 2028 by talking to economists and the historian Julian Zelliser.

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Odo.com. That's OdoO.com. Dr. Julian Salazar, thank you for joining us. We appreciate your time. How are you? It's a pleasure to be with you. I'm doing well. I wanted to talk to you because we were just in Pennsylvania talking to people about gas prices and how it affects their vote. And I know you're someone who has looked at that historically how gas prices impact presidencies,

of good topic for us today. I wanted to start by looking backwards, though. Like, when did the

price of gas become such a political weapon in America? Does this date all the way back to the model T? No, it really dates to the 1970s. That's when the United States will have two energy crisis in 1973 and 1979, and the price of gas becomes a huge political issue for Americans. It affects presidents, it affects Congress, and it becomes a manifestation in that decade of the problems

“facing the country. So I think that's when we start to realize we don't have unlimited resources”

and it's going to be a political problem. Can you go a more detail about that? Like for those unfamiliar, what happened in the '70s to make it so clear to Americans? Oh, this party might not last forever. Well, production of oil here peaks in the late 1960s, early 1970s, and then in 1973, OPEC, which is the cartel of oil producing countries in the Middle East, imposes an embargo on the U.S. because the United States had supported Israel during the Yumkip or War, and as a result

of the embargo, prices go up and supplies go down, and that's when Americans start to face gas lines. They start to face different kinds of rations and politicians need to deal with this, and then in 1979, we have another round of this after the Iranian Revolution, and that leads to even bigger gas lines and more stringent rations and government mandates in '79, and many people think it really helped bring down Jimmy Carter's presidency. Yeah, I was going to ask that. Should we think about

“Jimmy Carter as the first president who's election loss can be blamed on gas prices?”

Yeah, I mean, it could have been Richard Nixon, but other things brought him down, and I can't say that before. Although it was part, it was certainly part of the problem, but Carter, yes. I mean, Carter in 1979, it's in the summer of '79, it's really, really from what Americans experience, and it's not simply gas prices. It's waiting in line for gas. It's hearing that you could only buy gas on certain days. It's reading stories about people stealing gas and violent clashes occurring

over getting this commodity. And so there's a lot of things that go into the mix with Carter, the hostages in Iran, but certainly his difficulty dealing with this fundamental is a big part of what happens in 1980 when Reagan wins the presidency. Important. I want to ask also, though, about what looms over this, because of course, presidents have little control over the global price of oil yet they are blamed for seemingly every time. Since you're tracking kind of history

of this issue, how have politicians and particularly presidents dealt with that reality, considering the price of the pump is so important to their political futures,

while not always in their control. Well, in the '70s, they tried with legislation,

Jimmy Carter pushes legislation that deals with energy, but it's limited and it's success. Americans want a lot of oil, and it was hard to get them to conserve. He put solar panels on the White House. Yeah. There's really not much presidents can do. We have the strategic

“reserves. And other than that, I think presidents just waited out and hope the timing works”

in their favor and the gas prices go down. Is there an example of a president who beat the gas prices trap? I want to ask kind of a counter-intuitive question. Do we have any example of someone successfully convincing the country? Hey, look away from the price of the pump. No, I think we have presidents who say just look away for a little while. And when reelection comes around again, they're doing better. Even, I mean, even President George W. Bush struggled with some of this

after 9/11 and after the war started. But in the end, he doesn't make an announcement about it, so much as focus on other issues such as national security. And now we see how prices fluctuate. So you just wait for those moments. They're taking the stall tactic, mostly. I want to ask before we get to what's happening this summer. Why do we think it's such an importance about gas specifically? Of course, we hear about groceries, but it's not like we hear

about other consumer goods as much. You know, I personally think that the economy

went to crap after the McDonald's dollar menu in a way. But like why is it always gasoline

rather than those other commodities when we think about the priorities for the electorate? Well, I think there's a few things. One is that historically the automobile really symbolizes American freedom and American consumption. And so when something impinges in our ability to drive a lot, yeah, we love our cars. We love our cars. Second, it's a price you just see. It's just very visible when it goes up or down. More than groceries, even. And I think that kind of recurring

struggle, but it's also symbolically right in front of us. In these days, I think even more so now

than in the 70s or 80s, it's become something that the reporters and the media track. Yeah, yeah, it's a real price. So it's like stocks, but something that more people consume and stop the stocks. Right, right, right. You could just be driving past the gas station to get your sticker shock. You don't need to be in the Walmart or in said McDonald's to recognize that things have gone up. You don't even have to be buying gas. Yeah, literally driving by it. Yeah. I want to then talk

specifically about this summer. We've crossed four dollars a gallon again this summer. The highest since 2022. And this time it's pretty clearly tied with the ongoing war in Iran. Uh, Donald Trump is trying to make the argument that some short-term pain that the pump is worth a long-term national security focus. But his energy secretary said pretty clearly that gas won't be back to $3 until 2027. Obviously, that puts us after the midterm elections. It sounds like he's

running the exact playbook. You just told me has never worked, which is to get people to just pretend

this is not happening. I mean, what if you thought about how the president has handled the spike in gas prices since this summer? I mean, in part it strikes me as a president who doesn't really

“care about the fate of his party. Yeah. I think it is a big issue. I think most Republicans understand”

that and it's tied. I mean, another problem to add to the prices being up and staying up, it's tied to a war that really doesn't have public support. Yeah. Uh, it's a war without the kind of clarity, even that many people felt after 9/11 with Afghanistan and Iraq for a while. And so it's the worst of all worlds. And so I think he's really fumbled on this issue. And there was part of him that hope people either wouldn't care even if they noticed or somehow

the prices would diminish, but it's certainly not looking that way. Yeah, certainly. I mean, I wanted to ask about Biden because in 2022 the Biden administration saw record highs in gas prices also somewhat too do a foreign conflict, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And it sort of felt like

the perception of Biden's handling of the economy never really recovered after that. What lessons

could the Trump administration take from the administration just before them in terms of how to handle the political wagmire that is gas prices? Yeah, I'll add you remember some of Biden's

“opponents put stickers on gas pumps that said, you know, this is Biden's fault. Look, I think”

the most important is you can't deny the reality that Americans feel even in an age of disinformation and hard to follow news flows people see what their pain. And I think, you know, Trump trying to not recognize what people are struggling with and then to ignore the severity of it, both of which some people think Biden did with gas and other parts of the economy is just not a winning strategy. Okay, I want to ask a couple of forward-looking ones as we close out here. Like, okay, it's all

guess we've seen where the prices are now, come November if gas is still $4 or higher. Is the GOP doomed? They're not doomed. And I think the fears of, you know, election and administration is the counter to what we're talking about. But look, if the election is done well, and all those votes are counted, I think yes, this will be, in addition to some other issues, extraordinarily damaging to the GOP, and it would be part of potentially a wave election.

“Yeah, I wanted to ask, is there any risk for Democrats for campaigning so closely on gas prices?”

Like, as you mentioned, it fluctuates from administration administration. Presidents don't seem to have all that control over it. Legislation doesn't seem to have that much control over it. Is there any risk in saying, hey, he's made your gas prices go up when the next Democratic president or the next Democratic Congress may not be able to stop that? It's an even shorter term risk. I mean, any kind of fluctuation downward. You don't know where it will be,

undercuts that argument to a certain extent, even if it's temporary. Yeah. And secondly, look, that kind of anger about the economy can manifest itself in the throw the bombs out mentality for voters, meaning everyone's a risk. It's a vulnerable Democrats might feel the higher of voters paying higher prices as much as the Republicans in the midterm. So there are risks, of course. Yeah, seem like we're seeing some of those risks too, because when they say

throw the bombs out, that might not just be Republicans, that might include some Democrats, and we're seeing some of the Democratic electorate seemingly looped them both into that group. No, it's true. You can't control moments of great electoral unrest. That was true in the 70s where both parties ended up really suffering as a result of economic problems, oil, and

what they're going to do. I mean, it's not enough to say prices are too high. It's not enough to

say prices are too high right now, because of Iran, Democrats will have to make a case, as Biden tried to do with alternative energy and electric cars of here's a way that we don't have to keep facing this every few years. Not just the short term identifying with folks paying, but a long

“term solution. Exactly. And I think that would be a compelling argument given how important this is”

now become to dragging down Republican support. The last question I have is, you know, you have argued that the president may matter a little less than we think. And that certainly feels true when we talk about the issue of gas prices. But Donald Trump seems to challenge that thesis a little bit, like his willingness to push the boundaries on executive power, tax on Congress and the courts, even what we're seeing in terms of Iran, it feels like one guy has a reshaped so much of

our political scene that I wanted to ask you. Like, is there anything about the Trump year specifically Trump, too? That challenges that thesis. Are we seeing a president who is uniquely important, even

if others have been more controlled by structures? I look, presidents have been increasingly powerful

since the early 20th century. That's why we talk about an imperial presidency. They have executive authority. They have the ability to send troops without declarations of war, et cetera, et cetera, but there are limits. I mean, President Trump is very explicitly avoided legislation. He has put

“very little on the books and a lot of what he can do can quickly be undone. And I think the lesson in”

Iran right now is also the limits of what he can do. He has a lot of bluster. He has controlled what is happening on the end of the U.S. But he can't bring this to an end. I'm sure he would love to have this over. So in some ways it reflects the limitations of the power that he might not see affect him as much as others. Yeah, for all his power, he can't go take Greenland. Let's do his president, correct. And look, his power, this is another important part, rests on congressional

Republicans giving him that power. It's not simply that they've given up on that power. So he has a party that supports him. And so if the midterms change that equation, he would be as he was in 2019 in a much more vulnerable situation. Important to know. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate this historical context and the long look at the political effect of gas prices. Thanks for having me, a pleasure to talk to you. So after heading to Pennsylvania and talking

with Julian, a couple things stick out to me most clearly. It doesn't take a historian for people to know who to blame for $4 gas, whether you were a Trump hater or a Trump lover. Every single person we talk to knew that the higher gas prices were a direct consequence of the U.S. is war with Iran. This was the administration's doing and everybody knew it. Plus, based on my reporting, I think that you can see why gas prices may be more than any other issue have been a clear reason

why Donald Trump's approval rating is in the toilet. Confidence in his economic leadership

has collapsed in his second term. And being out in Pennsylvania, I think you can see why.

They weren't just blaming the high gas prices on the president individually, but on a Republican party that they feel has given him car blanche to execute a war they don't feel as an American's interest and they're the ones paying for. America actually will be in your feeds every Saturday with an interesting interview in culture or politics. And you could also watch these episodes on the Vox YouTube channel. Just go to youtube.com/vox or click the link in the show notes.

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