Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Politics

Heatmap Poll: Do Americans Blame Trump or Biden for Rising Electricity Prices?

Republicans are more likely to accuse Democrats, and vice versa, but there are also some surprising areas of agreement.

An angry billpayer.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Electricity is getting more expensive. In the past 12 months, electricity prices have increased more than twice as fast as overall inflation — and the most recent government inflation data, released last week, shows prices are continuing to rise.

The Trump administration knows that power bills are a political liability. In a recent interview with Politico, Energy Secretary Chris Wright affirmed that power prices were rising, but blamed the surge on “momentum” from Biden and Obama-era policies. “That momentum is pushing prices up right now,” he said. But the Trump administration, he continued, is “going to get blamed because we’re in office.”

Is he right? Who do Americans blame for rising power prices?

It might not be who you think.

A new Heatmap Pro poll of more than 3,700 registered voters across the United States finds that Americans tend to look beyond national politics for at least some of the causes of electricity price inflation.

When asked who they blame for rising power prices, Americans are more likely to say that rising energy demand, their local utility, and their state government are to blame than they are to cite the Trump or Biden administrations.

Americans also blame extreme weather and the oil and gas industry at least somewhat for electricity inflation. Only then do they blame a national political party.

Beyond those, other trendy national topics made only a dent in how Americans think about rising power prices. About 28% of Americans said that the construction of new data centers bears “a lot” of the blame for spiking power prices. Forty-three percent of Americans said that the data center buildout should get “a little” of the blame, and about a quarter of Americans said data centers were “not at all” responsible.

The renewable energy industry, which President Trump has claimed is causing the surge, also failed to get much traction among Americans. More than a third of respondents said that renewables were “not at all” responsible for rising electricity prices, while 27% said that they bore “a lot” of responsibility. At the same time, Americans aren’t pinning the increase on tariffs: 40% of registered voters said that in their view, the new trade levies were not the cause of higher bills.

In general, Americans aren’t wrong to look to their state government when thinking about their power bills. Although many states participate in regional electricity markets, electricity is primarily regulated at the state level by public utility commissioners. States really do bear more responsibility for power prices than they do over, say, the price of a loaf of bread — or a gallon of gasoline.

Where Republicans and Democrats agree — and disagree — on rising costs

No matter their self-reported political affiliation, Americans still tend to blame their state government, rising demand, and their local utility for rising power bills.

But there are trends. Democrats, of course, are far more likely to blame the Trump administration and Republicans — as well as tariffs — for electricity inflation. Republicans likewise blame the Biden administration and Democrats in much greater numbers.

Nearly 80% of Republicans say the renewable energy industry bears some amount of blame for rising prices, although only 36% of GOP respondents said it bore “a lot” of responsibility. But more than half of Republicans also allocated “a lot” or “a little” blame to the oil and gas industry.

Some causes seemed to unite respondents across the parties. Roughly the same share of Democrats, Republicans, and independents said that the buildout of new data centers was putting upward pressure on power prices.

Independent voters turned to the same big three explanations as other registered voters. But they were much more likely to blame Trump, tariffs, and the oil industry than Republicans were. Only a little more than a quarter of independents said that the renewable energy industry bore “a lot” of the blame for power price spikes as well.

Are the voters right?

In my reporting, I’ve found that surging investment in the local distribution grid — literally, the small-scale poles, wires, and transformers that get electricity to businesses and households — is the biggest driver of rising power prices. Extreme weather, higher natural gas prices, and — in some markets — rising power demand, especially from data centers, also play a role.

Some experts blame those drivers of higher bills on underlying failures — such as too little oversight from state-level regulators or excessive investment from utilities — that show up in this poll result. But just at a mechanical level, many Americans did cite some of the same causes that utility researchers themselves do. Most Americans, for instance, said that extreme weather and especially “investments in the local electric grid” are driving rising bills, although they didn’t assign it the same prominence that I would. About three quarters of respondents said that those causes bore “a lot” or “a little” of the blame.

Of course, just because rising grid spending, extreme weather, and higher gas prices have driven electricity inflation so far doesn’t mean that they will continue to do so. The Energy Information Administration projects that demand will keep rising, especially if the artificial intelligence boom continues. The Trump administration’s decision to hike taxes on electricity equipment — via tariffs and recent changes in President Trump’s spending bill — may eventually push up costs as well. So too will the Trump administration’s regulatory war on some types of new electricity infrastructure, including offshore wind farms and long-distance transmission lines.

Those policies may eventually hit voters — and their wallets. But right now, Americans aren’t looking at Washington, D.C., when thinking about their power bills.

The Heatmap Pro poll of 3,741 American registered voters was conducted by Embold Research via text-to-web responses from August 22 to 29, 2025. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1.7 percentage points.

Interested in more exclusive polling and insights? Explore Heatmap Pro here.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Politics

How the Shutdown Could Remake the Trump Administration

Republicans have blamed Democrats for unleashing Russ Vought on federal spending. But it doesn’t take much to see a bigger plan at work.

Russ Vought with scissors.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, has been waiting for this moment his whole adult life — or that’s what President Trump and the Republican Congressional leadership would like you to believe. As they put it, Vought is a fanatical budget cutter who, once unleashed, cannot be controlled. Who knows what he’ll cut if the Democrats continue to keep the government shut down?

Substantial staffing cuts that go beyond the typical shutdown furloughs are “the risk of shutting down the government and handing the keys to Russ Vought,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Politico on Thursday. “We don’t control what he’s going to do.”

Keep reading...Show less
Spotlight

Data Centers Collide with Local Restrictions on Renewables

A review of Heatmap Pro data reveals a troubling new trend in data center development.

A data center and a backyard.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Data centers are being built in places that restrict renewable energy. There are significant implications for our future energy grid – but it’s unclear if this behavior will lead to tech companies eschewing renewables or finding novel ways to still meet their clean energy commitments.

In the previous edition of The Fight, I began chronicling the data center boom and a nascent backlash to it by talking about Google and what would’ve been its second data center in southern Indianapolis, if the city had not rejected it last Monday. As I learned about Google’s practices in Indiana, I focused on the company’s first project – a $2 billion facility in Fort Wayne, because it is being built in a county where officials have instituted a cumbersome restrictive ordinance on large-scale solar energy. The county commission recently voted to make the ordinance more restrictive, unanimously agreeing to institute a 1,000-foot setback to take effect in early November, pending final approval from the county’s planning commission.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
AM Briefing

H2 No

On Tesla’s record, Britain’s backtracking, and an Antarctic ice warning

A hydrogen plant.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: After walloping Bermuda with winds of up to 100 miles per hour, Hurricane Imelda is veering northeast away from the United States • While downgraded from a hurricane, Humberto is set to soak Ireland and the United Kingdom as Storm Amy in the coming days and bring winds of up to 90 miles per hour • Typhoon Matmo is strengthening as it hits the Philippines and barrels toward China.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Energy Department kills West Coast hydrogen hubs

The Department of Energy is canceling two regional hydrogen hubs in California and the Pacific Northwest as part of a broader rescinding of 321 grants worth $7.5 billion for projects nationwide. Going after the hydrogen hubs, which the oil and gas industry lobbied to keep open after President Donald Trump came back to office, “leaves the agency’s intentions for the remaining five hubs scattered throughout the Midwest, Midatlantic, Appalachia, the Great Plains, and Texas unclear,” Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo wrote yesterday.

Keep reading...Show less
Green