Sid Salter
- Even in states where President Trump enjoys a reliable voter popularity, angst over high gas prices is one of the “kitchen table issues” that can and do impact elections.
President Donald Trump told the press, going into the Memorial Day weekend travel crush, that a peace deal with Iran is “essentially negotiated.” For the sake of Republican candidates in mid-term congressional elections in places where partisan races are actually competitive, they should hope that Trump’s assessment is correct.
Elections in reliably “red” states like Mississippi are highly unlikely to see partisan shifts over high gas prices and associated rising costs, but in “purple” states where both the GOP and Democrats are competitive, the outlook is decidedly different.
The late New York Times writer William Safire of William Safire, wrote about a competing metropolitan newspaper’s poll describing a voter as someone who “understands and cares about kitchen-table issues,” and noted that those issues were “the problems that everyday working people face in trying to make ends meet.”
In April, the Pew Research Center reported that of all the possible ramifications of the U.S. conflict with Iran – sending in American ground troops, large numbers of U.S. casualties, terrorist attacks in the U.S., expansion of hostilities outside the Middle East, or a shortage of U.S. weapons, the largest single concern of Americans was higher gas and fuel prices. Some 69% of respondents told Pew they were “extremely” or “very” concerned about fuel prices.
Possible terror attacks got the same level of concern from a combined 56%. While Mississippi midterm elections are unlikely to be impacted by those developments, the overall partisan majority in Congress is certainly in play, with the GOP holding a slight edge in the House and a 53-47 majority in the Senate. The more reliable national election prognosticators (Inside Elections, Professor Larry Sabato, 270-to-Win, Cook Political Report) suggest that Democrats have a path to regain control of the House.
Most of those same sources, as well as emerging prediction markets, expect the GOP to retain control of the Senate due to the staggered structure of Senate elections and other factors. But the vulnerability of the Republican hold on the House makes high gas prices a source of concern for party officials.
Mississippi has relatively lower gas prices due to nearby Gulf Coast energy production and refineries, but gas prices are still high here. Another factor that bears mention is Mississippi fuel taxes, which may well find their way into political debates in the next round of statewide and legislative elections.
Long-overdue legislation to raise Mississippi fuel excise taxes better to fund the maintenance of existing roads and bridges was enacted in 2025 after decades of debate. Before that legislative action, fuel taxes in Mississippi had not been increased since 1987. The same could not be said for the costs of building or maintaining the state’s roads and bridges.
Before the Legislature acted in 2025, Mississippi was paying the lowest fuel taxes in the nation. Despite the best efforts of the Mississippi Department of Transportation, it struggled with some of the nation’s worst-maintained roads due to a lack of funding.
The 2025 legislation raised the state’s gas tax to 21 cents per gallon beginning last year and will rise to 24 cents on July 1 of this year before peaking at 24 cents per gallon on July 1, 2027. The federal gas tax remains at 18.4 cents per gallon, or CPG, the same as it has been since 1993.
The federal and state fuel tax systems are flat taxes. The current spike in gas prices doesn’t bring in more tax revenue for the state or the feds. The only way governments can take in more revenue from gas taxes is for the volume of gas consumed to increase, and automobiles are now manufactured to require less fuel than a decade ago.
As much as gas consumption is discretionary, high gas prices could result in some marginal reductions in consumption, but don’t bet on it.
Even in states where President Trump enjoys a reliable voter popularity, angst over high gas prices is one of the “kitchen table issues” that can and do impact elections. The reality is that partisan change in a relative handful of races can change partisan control of Congress and make governing more difficult for Trump’s federal agencies.
Sid Salter
