(Daily Caller News Foundation) — Higher gasoline prices will influence a majority of voters to vote for Republican candidates in the November midterm elections, according to a poll released Thursday.
More than 54% of surveyed voters said that rising gas prices would encourage them to vote for Republicans, according to a poll conducted by Convention of States Action and the Trafalgar Group. Independent voters said that they were 55.5% more likely to vote for Republicans due to increased gas prices, while 21.3% said they were more likely to vote for Democrats and 23.2% were not sure.
Nearly 33% of voters said that price hikes at the pump would make them more likely to vote for Democratic candidates while 12.7% of those polled said they were not sure, according to the poll. After falling for almost 100 days straight since June, gas prices have been rising for three weeks in a row and could rise even further following the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) decision to cut crude oil production by two million barrels per day.
The national average gas price per gallon is $3.91, which is 62 cents higher than it was in October 2021, according to AAA data. The Biden administration is scrambling to blame oil companies for “price gouging” at the pump, since current gas prices may hurt the Democrats’ chances of victory in key congressional and gubernatorial midterm races, according to The Washington Post.
The Energy Department will release 10 million more barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) throughout the month of November to bring down gas prices, and the White House stated on Oct. 5 that it was considering new SPR releases due to OPEC’s production cuts.
The poll surveyed 1,079 likely 2022 midterm voters from Oct. 8 to Oct. 11 with a margin of error of 2.9%.
The Democratic National Committee and the White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
