Inspired by a meme stating something to the effect that reductions in gas prices being a conspiracy to make people vote a certain way, I decided to pull some gas price data (source: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm) and play with it a bit. There were a few interesting things in there. First: it appears to be about a fair coin flip as to whether gasoline prices will even trend down leading up to November during an election year. Second: it’s about the same for non-election years. Third: outside of 2022, the only months when prices were above $4.00/gallon were June and July of 2008 (not related to the original claim, but interesting nonetheless).

Also interesting is that the dip after 9/11 is about the fifth largest since 1993, with the bigger ones coming later, and the largest being from September 2008 to December of the same year. Also of interest: the last time the average was below a dollar was in February of 1996 ($0.96/gallon).

Obviously, there are some follow-ups to the original meme even without looking at the data, such as

“Who controls the gasoline prices in each party?”

“Is it just one person, or is the party that controls Congress have a say?”

“What happens when the party in control of Congress is not the party of the president?”

“By what mechanism are the prices being controlled?”

“What are we to make of increasing being consistent around the globe?”

…and I’m sure many others.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/glenn1364/viz/GasPriceTrends/GasPriceTrendsbyYearOverYear