Record diesel and gasoline prices on Election Day pushed voters toward the Democrats, who won majorities in the Senate and the House. Nearly 9 in 10 voters cited the cost of living as a key factor.
Record diesel and gasoline prices on Election Day helped push American voters toward the Democrats in Tuesday's midterm elections, in which the cost of living was cited as a determining factor in their vote, according to exit polls.
The Democrats captured majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, with sweeping victories that reached deep into Republican strongholds, as tens of millions of voters delivered a harsh rebuke to President Donald Trump.
Only last month, Trump bragged at a campaign rally that the U.S. oil and gas business was making hundreds of billions of dollars after the Iran war, and said: "We're making a fricking fortune," while also assuring that fuel prices would come down. But many voters in rural states who depend on diesel, gasoline and heating oil to earn a living and heat their homes could not wait for the promised drop in prices.
Nearly 9 in 10 voters identified the cost of living as a crucial or important factor in their decision, according to exit polls conducted by SSRS on behalf of a consortium of U.S. media outlets. Many said they felt worse off than two years ago.
Diesel and gasoline prices stood at their highest level ever for an Election Day, according to price tracker GasBuddy, surpassing 2022 levels and driven higher by the Iran war and Russia's war in Ukraine.
Rising diesel prices can fuel inflation, since diesel is consumed in farm machinery, fishing boats and the trucks and trains that haul goods across the country. Heating oil warms homes in key northern states such as Maine, where voters elected Democrat Troy Jackson, who defeated Susan Collins, a Republican who had held the seat for nearly 30 years.
Soaring diesel costs helped convince farmers to back the Democrats, said Donn Teske, president of the Kansas Farmers Union for the past 25 years. High costs for fuel and other inputs, such as fertilizer, make it hard for farmers to make a living, said Teske, who voted for Adam Hamilton, the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas since 1932.
"That price of diesel, it goes way beyond what goes in the combines and the tractors," said Teske, 71, whose family raises cattle near Wheaton, Kansas. "It's the trucks that run up and down the road, and what the consumer has to pay for gas at the pumps that eats into their family budget."
"All the farmers have families too, and you're trying to keep the kids fed ... and it's just gotten frustrating for everybody."
Last month, Trump announced an $8 billion financial support program for farmers, intended to offset high diesel costs during the fall harvest. However, a Trump administration official said late last month that the aid would not be disbursed until after the election. And farmers said on Wednesday they did not know whether the aid would cover all of their additional costs.
"It's a Band-Aid," Teske said.
While Trump seemed powerless to significantly lower fuel prices ahead of the election, the Democrats did not offer solutions of their own to quickly dampen prices either. Democrats such as Jackson in Maine pointed to Republican support for the Iran war. Collins said she voted several times to bring the war to an end after initially supporting it.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that the Iran war was partly the reason for the big election losses. "I think it's largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit in the short term," he said, adding that he believed the war was necessary to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.
Dan Atkisson, who grows grain sorghum near Stockton, Kansas, said he voted for Republican Roger Marshall for the Senate, but that it was impossible to avoid high diesel costs. "At the end of day, you still have to use diesel fuel to plant, to harvest, to spray, to haul the grain away," said Atkisson, 41. "You just don't have another option."
Jamie Ager, a Democrat who flipped North Carolina's 11th congressional district on Tuesday, told Reuters in an interview that he heard from farmers and other rural residents that high fuel prices were among the key reasons they became interested in his campaign.
"Obviously, the cost of fuel and diesel fuel was a lot, the fertilizer crisis this spring when people were putting a lot of crops in the ground," he said, referring to a spike in prices for fertilizer, which uses natural gas as a feedstock, driven up by the wars. "The economic landscape for so many farmers was rough."
