With the 2026 midterm elections quickly approaching, President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is ongoing and gas prices remain high.
Americans are taking note: On this week’s episode of America, Actually, host Astead Herndon visits Allentown, Pennsylvania in the state’s bellwether Seventh District, to hear how persistently high gas prices — almost $4.20 per gallon in Pennsylvania — are showing up in residents’ lives. Many said the economy and prices were at the top of their list of issues, and laid the blame at Trump’s feet.
Still, gas is just one expense of many, for voters who are likely also feeling the pinch with the cost of groceries, housing, electricity, and more. So how much power do gas prices really have to shape the outcome of an election — and, potentially, a presidency? And after decades of renewable energy growth, technological disruption, and new existential worries, why are gas prices still so core to the American political conversation?
To learn more, Herndon spoke with Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. They discussed the history of gas prices as a salient political issue, why Americans feel high prices so acutely, even compared to other commodities, and whether voters are ever willing to overlook gas prices when they go to the polls.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.
When did the price of gas become such a political weapon in America? Does this date all the way back to the Model T?
It really dates to the 1970s. That’s when the United States will have two energy crises, 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.
I think that’s when we start to realize we don’t have unlimited resources and it’s gonna be a political problem.
Can you go in more detail about that? What happened in the ’70s to make it so clear to Americans that this party might not last forever?
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 US because the United States had supported Israel during the Yom Kippur 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.
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.
Carter in 1979 is really reeling 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.
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.
Of course, presidents have little control over the global price of oil, yet they are blamed for it seemingly every time. How have politicians and particularly presidents dealt with that reality, considering the price at the pump is so important to their political futures while not always in their control?
In the ’70s they tried with legislation. Carter pushes legislation that deals with energy, but it’s limited in its success. Americans want a lot of oil and it was hard to get them to conserve.
He put solar panels on the White House. There’s really not much that presidents can do. We have the strategic reserves. And other than that, I think presidents just wait it out and hope the timing works in their favor and the gas prices go down again.
Is there an example of a president who beat the gas prices trap? Do we have any example of someone successfully convincing the country, “Hey, look away from the price of the pump”?
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 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.
Why is it always gasoline rather than other commodities when we think about the priorities for the electorate?
There’s a few things. One is that, historically, the automobile really symbolizes American freedom and American consumption. And so when something impinges on our ability to drive a lot…
Second, it’s a price you just see. It’s just very visible when it goes up or down, more than groceries even.
I think that kind of recurring image for people becomes very politically potent if that number gets too high. So it’s a real struggle, but it’s also symbolically right in front of us. And 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.
I want to talk specifically about this summer. We’ve crossed $4/gallon again this summer, the highest since 2022, and this time it’s pretty clearly tied with the ongoing war in Iran.
Donald Trump has tried to make the argument that some short-term pain at 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.
What have you thought about how the president has handled the spike in gas prices?
In part it strikes me as a president who doesn’t really care about the fate of his party. I think it’s a big issue. I think most Republicans understand that. And it’s tied to a war that really doesn’t have public support.
It’s a war without the kind of clarity that many people felt after 9/11 with Afghanistan, and Iraq for a while. 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 hoped people either wouldn’t care even if they noticed, or somehow the prices would diminish. It’s certainly not looking that way.
