As Democrats and Republicans look at the overwhelming results of the 2026 midterm election, it’s worth remembering what has become a political axiom in America: “.” Democratic strategist James Carville famously said that to presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992, but he might have said “it’s energy prices” instead. , making energy and politics inseparable, especially when gasoline prices rise.
Midterm elections have historically been and the in Washington, D.C.
Many factors affecting gasoline prices are beyond a president’s or Congress’s control. Prices for crude oil and petroleum are as the results of economic forces of supply and demand. Even the companies that produce oil don’t have , because of how that oil gets to refineries: Over 60% of the world’s crude oil is , with 20% of global supplies , which has been closed, or nearly so, for much of 2026 as the conflict with Iran drags on.
When , follow. can contribute to .
to those changes, and . For the 2026 midterm election, of any previous election. That put Republicans in the precarious position of .
Four American presidents – Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden – confronted the during midterm elections.
Oil embargo, Nixon and Ford
Richard Nixon was the first modern president to truly face an energy crisis that became political. In retaliation for U.S. support for Israel during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on the United States. , and crude oil prices rocketed 184% from prewar levels of in March 1974. Nixon’s didn’t prevent U.S. .
When Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal in August 1974, Gerald Ford took office. , and .
Right before that year’s midterm election, Ford launched the “,” or WIN, campaign. But and five Senate seats.
“WIN” didn’t work, and by the 1976 presidential election, gas prices were – adjusted for inflation to late 2026, that’s $3.49. Ford lost his reelection bid to Jimmy Carter.
Carter’s struggles
In Carter’s first two years in office, starting in 1977, the monthly average price of unleaded gasoline in the U.S. . Inflation hit .
In the 1978 midterm election, . , and by the 1980 presidential election, gas prices were . Plagued by those figures and the Iranian hostage crisis, Carter lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.
Reagan enters the picture
Reagan implemented “” by cutting taxes and regulations, reducing government spending, tightening monetary policy and . By the mid-1980s, and non-OPEC nations , lowering the and .
In the 1982 midterms, and gained one in the Senate.
Reagan won reelection to the presidency in a landslide in 1984, but the challenges for incumbents remained in the 1986 midterms. Though and a gallon, and eight in the Senate.
Trump’s first round
In the lead-up to the midterms during Donald Trump’s first term as president, crude prices had from when he took office in January 2017 to October 2018. And . In the 2018 midterms, Republicans .
Biden years
Over the course of 2020, COVID-19 restrictions slowed the U.S. economy. as . Prices rose because of pandemic-related supply chain backups.
And from Election Day in November 2020 to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the average price of unleaded gasoline in the U.S. rose by 66%, .
Also, as pandemic restrictions lifted and the economy began recovering, demand for gasoline rebounded, straining supplies.
Upon taking office in 2021, Biden took steps to curb rising energy costs, including in March 2022, which the Treasury Department suggested helped prevent gasoline price increases of .
But other Biden policy moves made it harder to increase energy supplies. He that would have brought more petroleum into the U.S. and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Gulf of Mexico. He also , under which countries have promised to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, generally meaning moving away from fossil fuels as an energy source.
In June 2022, , a 40-year high. And U.S. gasoline prices reached an ; adjusted for inflation, that’s $5.60 a gallon today.
The 2022 midterm election wasn’t as bad for Democrats as they might have feared, though it wasn’t a success: The party and one Senate seat. That’s a reminder that in voters’ minds when they are casting ballots.
Trump’s second term
During the first 12 months of Trump’s second term, , U.S. , from 13.3 million to 13.7 million barrels per day, and the AAA national average price of regular unleaded gasoline fell 4.5%, to .
On Feb. 28, 2026, U.S. military action against Iran disrupted Middle Eastern oil production and oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Initially, , though by the end of September it had .
Overall, Middle Eastern crude oil exports are averaging around 24 million barrels a day, in part because of increased use of pipelines out of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Because of the war with Iran, AAA’s national average price of unleaded regular gasoline has increased by almost 40%, from to as of Nov. 3, 2026.
Implications
As the preelection polling had suggested, voters held Trump accountable for , as well as .
It was a reminder of a basic economic and political principle: When the economy is doing well, and their parties. And when voters are , they are and their parties.
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