Three days before Americans vote in the November 3 midterm elections, the price at the pump has crossed a political line that will follow both parties into the final weekend of campaigning: the average price of gasoline paid by U.S. motorists during President Donald Trump's second term has now surpassed the average for the whole Biden administration, according to analyses of American Automobile Association (AAA) data reported this week by CNN and Reuters and summarised by Seeking Alpha on Saturday, October 31, 2026. A gallon of regular gasoline has averaged $3.473 since Trump returned to office, CNN calculated, compared with $3.471 under President Joe Biden — and CNN noted the gap is set to grow wider for as long as the national average stays above $4 a gallon, as it does now.
Diesel has crossed the same line by a much wider margin. Reuters reported the term average for diesel at $4.343 a gallon under Trump against $4.078 under Biden, and U.S. diesel hit a record high of $6.523 a gallon on September 22. AAA reported the national average for regular gasoline was $4.18 on Saturday, down 11 cents during the past week but up $1.14 from a year ago, while diesel averaged $6.31, down 2 cents in a week but up $2.63 from this time last year.
Source: Seeking Alpha via TradingView, reporting CNN and Reuters analyses of AAA data
The precise daily figures behind the headline tell the same story in more detail. Regular gasoline averaged $4.1837 a gallon on October 31, down from $4.2957 a week earlier and $4.4343 a month earlier, but far above the $3.0403 averaged on October 31, 2025. Diesel averaged $6.3101, down from $6.3374 a week earlier and $6.4139 a month earlier, and far above last year's $3.6876. In the eight months since the start of the Middle East war, U.S. average pump prices have climbed 43 percent and diesel prices have surged about 70 percent to the highest levels on record.
Source: TokenPost, reporting AAA daily averages
A new chapter in a story this site has been tracking
Awaaz Punjab reported on October 26 that GasBuddy had put diesel at $6.34 a gallon and gasoline at $4.24. Five days on, both fuels have eased slightly from those levels — but the new development is not the daily tick. It is the crossover of the full-term averages, reached on the last weekend before an election in which the cost of living is, as Bloomberg's pre-election reporting puts it, the top concern of voters. Gasoline also remains well short of its all-time nominal high of $5.02 a gallon, set in June 2022 under Biden in the months after Russia invaded Ukraine — a comparison the White House is quick to make.
The pledge, measured at the pump
On the campaign trail in September 2024, Trump told the Economic Club of New York that his plan would cut energy prices in half or more within 12 months of taking office, and he promised gasoline below $2 a gallon. Saturday's $4.18 average is more than double that target. The White House disputes the record framing: it argues gasoline was dearer around some earlier election days once inflation is taken into account, and spokeswoman Taylor Rogers has said prices will fall drastically once the Middle East conflict ends. GasBuddy's head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, counters that prices have never been this elevated so late in a year — and notes GasBuddy projected in December 2025 that 2026 would be the cheapest gas year since 2020, before the war rewrote the outlook.
Why diesel, not gasoline, is the real squeeze
Analysts stress that 2026's fuel shock is a refining shortage more than a crude shortage. The Strait of Hormuz disruption that began on February 28 cut flows through the world's key oil chokepoint; Reuters commentary put October flows at about 11.7 million barrels a day, up from 9.75 million in September but still below normal. Refineries themselves have become targets: Reuters reported a strike on Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia's largest refinery, on October 27, with further Houthi claims on October 29 that have not all been independently confirmed, and Ukraine's drone campaign has repeatedly hit Russian refineries — Russia produces roughly 10 percent of the world's diesel. J.P. Morgan Private Bank estimates global refinery throughput is running about 6 million barrels a day below the seasonal median and nearly 8 million below last year. 'Crude you cannot refine does you no good,' De Haan said, and ExxonMobil's chief executive Darren Woods said on October 30 that diesel is the main pressure point for economic growth.
For the Punjabi truckers who form a large share of this site's U.S. readership, the diesel line is the one that decides the week's earnings. The arithmetic is stark: a 120-gallon fill at Saturday's $6.3101 average costs about $757, against about $443 for the same fill at last year's $3.6876 — roughly $314 more per fill than a year ago, before a single mile is driven on corridors such as I-5, I-80, I-40 and I-10. One relief measure is aimed squarely at those drivers: an October 6 order lets truckers use tax-exempt red-dyed off-road diesel on highways for fuel used from October 5 to December 31, 2026 — it lowers truckers' costs, analysts note, but adds no new supply and may tighten dyed-diesel stocks in farm regions.
Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi estimates each sustained $1-a-gallon rise in diesel adds about 0.1 percentage point to inflation; with diesel roughly $2.50 above its February level, that implies a direct effect of about 0.25 point before second-round effects. Goldman Sachs estimates higher diesel could lift food prices by 0.2 to 0.4 percentage point cumulatively. Households feel it directly too: the University of Michigan's final October consumer sentiment reading was 48.0 — the second-lowest in the survey's 74-year history — and survey director Joanne Hsu said purchasing power continues to dominate consumer views of the economy.
Where the pain is sharpest — and lightest
AAA's state map shows how uneven the burden is. The most expensive gasoline markets are California at $5.94 a gallon, Hawaii at $5.65, Nevada at $5.25, Washington at $5.24 and Oregon at $4.83 — a list that includes the West Coast states where many Punjabi families and trucking firms are based. The cheapest are North Carolina at $3.42, Georgia at $3.61, Texas at $3.70, South Carolina at $3.72 and Louisiana at $3.74. The two national trackers also differ slightly by method: AAA, which publishes a daily retail estimate, put gasoline at $4.2046 on October 30, while the Energy Information Administration's weekly survey put it at $4.269 for the week of October 26, with diesel at $6.352 on the EIA measure against AAA's $6.3204.
What Washington has tried — and why analysts say it cannot move the price quickly
The administration's responses have mostly changed who pays rather than how much fuel exists. A Russian diesel arrangement eases sanctions to allow exports, but reporting on its size conflicts — CNBC-based reporting cited about 6 million barrels through November, while Reuters reported 500,000 tonnes permitted for foreign sale from October 10, with November quotas possibly rising to 2 million tonnes; the IEA and ING both judge the volumes too small to rebalance the market. An $8 billion Harvest Fuel Relief package makes one-time USDA payments to farmers — Reuters notes total federal farm assistance has reached a record $55.4 billion, above the $45 billion of 2020 — but transfers income without adding fuel. Senator Chuck Grassley lobbied for a diesel export ban; Trump rejected it on October 2, judging it might push gasoline prices higher, and chose reserve releases and tax relief instead, alongside a G7 agreement to release emergency diesel and crude stocks.
What happens next
The first test is Tuesday, November 3, when midterm voters decide control of Congress with fuel-driven living costs at the top of the agenda. Beyond the vote, analysts lay out three paths: if fighting resumes after the election, De Haan warns of a possible pre-Thanksgiving spike, with diesel at greatest risk because inventories and refining capacity are constrained; if the status quo holds, crude keeps its war premium and diesel stays tight; and if diplomacy eases the Hormuz and refinery risks, gasoline would likely fall faster than diesel. The International Energy Agency expects the refinery-driven diesel shortage to persist, with meaningful inventory rebuilding unlikely before the second half of 2027 — which is why, for drivers and truckers alike, Saturday's milestone is less about one weekend's price than about a fuel bill that every tracker agrees is not coming down quickly.