When gas prices reached all-time highs, Joe Biden pointed the finger at everyone and everything but himself. As far as Biden was concerned, the blame belonged to Donald Trump, COVID-19, Big Oil and gas stations, and Vladimir Putin. We were all supposed to just forget everything he did to cut off domestic production and leave our energy needs to the whims of foreign nations.
However, as soon as there was a discernible drop in the price of gas, Biden took credit for it. His assuming responsibility for the decline came despite the fact that industry analysts maintained that dipping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve had only a marginal effect on those prices. Regardless of whether or not Biden’s policies had a significant impact on gas prices, he took full ownership of them.
And then they started to go back up again, and it couldn’t be happening at a more politically inconvenient time for Biden and his party. According to a new poll from The Trafalgar Group in collaboration with Convention of States Action, the current rise in gas prices is hurting Democrats in the final weeks before the midterm elections.
The poll found that 11.2% of Democrats say they will be more likely to vote for Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections. Just over three-quarters (75.5%) say they will be more likely to vote for Democratic candidates if gas prices continue to rise. The poll also found that 93.4% of Republicans say they will be more likely to vote for Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections if gas prices continue to rise, and 2.8% said they’d be more likely to vote for Democratic candidates.
Of course, those findings aren’t nearly as consequential as what independents say, and based on these results, you can understand why Joe Biden attempted a quid pro quo with the Saudi Kingdom to postpone oil production cuts until after the midterms. According to the poll, 55.5% of independents said higher gas prices would make them more likely to support Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms, while only 21.3 percent said they’d be more likely to support Democratic candidates if gas prices continue to rise.
“These numbers shed light on President Biden’s desperate attempts to hide from voters the impact of his Administration’s far-left energy policies,” said Mark Meckler, president of the Convention of States. “From recklessly depleting our nation’s strategic oil reserves, to pressuring OPEC countries to postpone cuts in oil production through the November elections, it’s clear that they’re playing politics with our pocketbooks. That is both bad politics and bad policy.”
Democrats had hoped that anger over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade would prevent the red wave that has long been predicted for November. Still, polls have consistently shown that abortion is not the most critical issue for voters.
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The issues that do matter to voters are economic issues and crime—both of which are big problems for the Democrats right now. In the past couple of years, Democrats put all their eggs in the “defund the police” basket and ending cash bail basket, and the results are too apparent for even diehard Democrat voters to ignore. Between the economy and crime, it’s hard to see how Democrats make it through these midterms without suffering significant losses.
