Gas Attack -- Blue States Have the Highest Prices at the Pump

Stephen Moore on Oct 27, 2026

Democrats can't seem to decide whether they want higher or lower gas prices. On the one hand, they're promising that if they win a majority in Congress, they will work to bring down prices at the pump. On the other hand, they can't bring down prices in their own blue states.

We at Unleash Prosperity recently analyzed gas and diesel prices in the 50 states. Here's what we found: The more Democratic a state, the higher the price of gas. For each additional percentage point of the state's vote that went to former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, gas prices are about 2 cents higher.

On average, deep-blue states pay about 25 cents a gallon more for gas than deep-red states. Yes, we know correlation is not causation (umbrellas don't cause rain), but it does suggest that relying on Democrats to lower gas prices is probably a fool's errand.

Take California, where gas now costs more than $6 a gallon. That's because of climate change policies and taxes that reach up to 75 cents a gallon. All told, Californians pay about $1.25 a gallon more than the average state. Yet California Gov. Gavin Newsom is considered a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.

Eight of the 10 states with the highest gas prices are run by Democrats. And eight of the 10 states with the lowest gas prices are run by Republicans.

This isn't a coincidence. Democrats are so deeply in bed with the radical climate change lobby that they have done everything they can to strangle the industry. Let's not forget that one of former President Joe Biden's first actions in office was killing the Keystone XL pipeline.

That was followed by a plan that his "climate justice agency" promoted, the goal of which was to stop all new production of fossil fuels. The plan was even opposed to nuclear power and aimed to curtail highway spending to discourage Americans from driving -- unless they were in an electric vehicle.

New pipelines were to be banned.

Meanwhile, several Democratic state attorneys general are suing the oil and gas companies for climate change costs. None of this is increasing our supply of oil.

When President Donald Trump announced a "drill, baby, drill" energy dominance strategy, Democrats in Congress nearly had a cardiac arrest. Trump's energy policy has led to an all-time high U.S. output of oil and natural gas. How high would gas prices be today if we weren't now the world's leader in oil and gas? Anyone remember that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in favor of natural gas until someone had to remind her that natural gas is a fossil fuel?

America still gets the majority of its energy from the fossil fuels that the left hates: oil, gas and coal. To power the energy needed for the next tech revolution, we will need to double or triple our energy production, and it's a fantasy to think we can do that with windmills.

As for gas prices, you can't in one breath talk about "net zero" carbon emissions and a war on our oil and gas producers and in the other breath promise lower gas prices at the pump.

You don't send an arsonist to put out a fire.

Stephen Moore is a former Trump senior economic adviser and the cofounder of Unleash Prosperity, which advocates for education freedom for all children.