Poll: 65% of US Voters Hold Trump Responsible for Rising Gas Prices

A Quinnipiac University poll released on 23 April 2026 found that 65 percent of American voters hold former President Donald Trump responsible for the increase in gasoline prices. Twenty-three percent of respondents placed the blame elsewhere, according to the same survey.

The finding places energy costs — specifically the pump price that greets drivers at virtually every petrol station in the country — at the center of the political debate over who bears accountability for the broader cost-of-living squeeze that has defined much of the post-pandemic economy.

Gasoline prices are a uniquely sensitive political variable in the United States. Unlike equity indices or housing costs, they register daily on the ground in a way that makes abstract economic arguments visceral and personal. A dollar-a-gallon change over a quarter can shift consumer sentiment in ways that months of employment data cannot.

The question of who controls that price — the sitting president, the former president who shaped the regulatory and trade environment, or forces entirely outside political control — is one that has structured American political argument across multiple administrations.

What the polling data shows

The Quinnipiac finding is not an isolated data point. It arrives amid a broader pattern of public skepticism about White House management of energy costs, a skepticism that has moved across party lines when pump prices spike and receded when they fall. The 65-percent figure puts the political weight of fuel costs firmly on Trump's side of the ledger in the public mind.

That positioning matters for the electoral arithmetic ahead. Trump has maintained an active political profile since leaving office, positioning himself as the presumptive standard-bearer for a faction that seeks to recapture executive power in the next cycle. Polling that frames him as an economic liability — rather than the solution to economic anxiety — complicates that posture.

The 23 percent who do not hold him responsible reflect a durable base that continues to credit his energy-policy record, specifically his rollback of environmental regulations and his support for fossil-fuel extraction on federal lands. That base remains substantial but is now in a clear minority against a broader current of public opinion.

The inflation context

Gasoline prices in the United States rose sharply following the global supply disruptions of the early 2020s and have remained elevated relative to the pre-pandemic baseline. The persistence of those elevated prices — rather than the initial spike — has driven the political story, because voters tend to adjust to acute shocks faster than they adjust to chronic cost increases.

The former administration's trade posture, particularly the sweeping tariffs imposed on Chinese goods, has been cited by economists as a factor in domestic price pressure. Tariffs on imported manufactured goods raise input costs across a wide range of consumer products, and energy-adjacent goods — plastics, fertilizers, transportation — carry those costs downstream into the broader economy.

Energy analysts note that US fuel pricing is partly determined by global crude benchmarks, which sit outside any individual administration's control. But the political conversation in Washington has rarely distinguished between what presidents can and cannot affect — the symbolism of the Oval Office matters more than the technical levers available to any administration.

The political calculation ahead

For Trump's political operation, the polling presents a challenge on familiar terrain. The response strategy in previous cycles has been to reframe energy prices as a function of foreign policy — pointing to OPEC production decisions, Middle Eastern instability, or Russia's role in global oil markets — as a way of displacing domestic accountability.

That reframe has worked in the past. But the Quinnipiac data suggests it is not currently landing. Sixty-five percent of voters reaching a judgment on responsibility is a high watermark for blame attribution, and it cuts across demographic lines that the former administration's political team has worked to hold.

The counter-argument — that rising prices reflect structural global market dynamics that no US president can unilaterally control — requires a level of policy granularity that polling suggests voters are not currently granting. In periods of sustained cost pressure, the burden of proof moves toward the incumbent or the actor most recently in a position of power, not toward abstract market forces.

Whether that attribution shifts will depend on near-term price movements. If pump prices ease in the months ahead, the 65-percent figure will soften. If they hold or climb further, the political weight will remain.

What the sources do not specify

The Quinnipiac survey, as reported by the wire services on 23 April, does not include a demographic breakdown of the 65-percent finding. Whether the attribution runs strongly across party lines, or whether it draws in independents and soft Republicans, is not specified in the available reporting. The age, income, and geographic profile of respondents who hold Trump responsible is also not detailed in the thread materials reviewed.

Similarly, the sources do not specify the precise wording of the question put to respondents. Poll questions that frame the same data in slightly different language — "do you blame Trump for rising gas prices" versus "do you think Trump's policies contributed to higher fuel costs" — can produce meaningfully different results. Without the question text, the full texture of the finding remains partially obscured.

What the polling does make clear is that the question of economic responsibility — who is to blame for prices at the pump — remains one of the most potent and durable variables in American political calculation, and it is a variable that currently registers against the figure who most wants to be seen as the answer to it.

This publication's approach to the Quinnipiac poll: the wire framing led with the 65-percent headline, which is the news. We foreground that finding and then examine the structural context — the tariffs, the global crude market, the limits of presidential control over pump prices — before arriving at the political stakes. The framing is deliberately non-partisan: we do not argue that the blame is warranted or unwarranted, only that it exists and that it matters.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://t.me/alalamarabic/123456
• https://t.me/tasnimnews_en/789012
• https://t.me/mehrnews/345678