Trump faces midterm fuel reckoning as gas prices near Biden’s average

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But in a sign of how much fuel costs are weighing on voters’ minds, some 74% of respondents to a Pew Research Center survey this month said they were “very concerned” about the price of energy, exceeding worries about healthcare, housing and the job market. The same figure was only 43% before the conflict with Iran began.

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High energy costs threaten to turn solidly red areas of the US into swing states. Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Alaska, which Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024, are now considered toss-ups for Senate races by the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election forecaster. Households in each of these states, with the exception of Texas, spend more of their income on energy than the US average, according to James West, a managing director at Melius Research LLC.

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“It’s perceived that the Iran conflict is what’s causing this,” he said in an interview. “Oil prices, even post conflict, will remain elevated.”

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Republicans running for office in these battleground states are under pressure to show that they have plans to address voter concerns about costly energy.

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“Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran,” Ashley Hinson, the state’s Republican candidate for Senate, said last month as she appealed for the suspension of gasoline taxes.

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Her opponent, Democrat Josh Turek, said rising costs are the “number one issue” in the race, blaming Hinson for supporting Trump. “She has voted in favor of continuing this war in Iran that has led to fuel prices, fertilizer prices and diesel prices to be at an all-time high,” he said at a campaign event last month.

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Roger Marshall, the Republican Senate candidate in Kansas, called the cost of gasoline “absolutely the barometer for this election” in an interview on WABC radio in June. Prices have increased 10% since then.

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And Ken Paxton, a Republican running for Senate in Texas, told donors and lobbyists that fuel costs were a major drag on his campaign, Axios reported. “People are feeling the pinch,” he said in a recording obtained by the news outlet. “It’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel.”

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Stubbornly high fuel prices are worse for the economy than discreet items like eggs or cars because of their ripple effect on other goods throughout the supply chain. They are being baked into inflation expectations, lifting bond yields and prompting the Federal Reserve to raise rates to try to cool consumer demand.

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As a result, the average 30-year mortgage rate has surged to 7.5% from just over 6% before the war with Iran, reversing a downward trajectory since 2023. This makes home ownership, a central pillar of the American dream, more difficult at a time when the cost of healthcare, airline tickets and groceries is rising. Annual inflation is 3.7%, compared with 2.4% before the war.

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Facing mounting voter anger, Trump has announced a flurry of measures to keep a lid on energy prices in recent weeks.

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The administration allowed wider use of tax-exempt diesel, pressured G7 allies to release stockpiles of the fuel and struck a deal with Vladimir Putin for more supplies. It also pledged to expand a refinery in Texas with taxpayer funds, finance electrical infrastructure growth and endorsed the Ratepayer Protection Act to help shield consumers from power costs associated with large data centers.

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In late August, the Trump administration announced a blockbuster deal to take majority control over a huge amount of Venezuela’s oil wealth, the latest move by the president to establish US dominance over the Western Hemisphere. But the success of the agreement is riding on fields that are aging, degraded or expensive to access.