Americans are well aware of gas prices' rise
The Ipsos Consumer Tracker, fielded on Ipsos' Omnibus platform, asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.
Why we asked: We just asked this a couple of waves ago but as I watched gas prices go up another $0.15 overnight at Costco… and note, some of this is from W139 and likely has shifted even harder.
What we found: Now 94% of Americans feel gas prices are going up in their area. That’s up 3 points from just a couple of waves earlier. It’s hard to have much movement on something that is nearly unanimous to start with. Two in three Americans (63% up from 58%) say they are driving less overall as a result. Fewer (16% down from 21%) say they are driving farther to buy cheaper gas (likely because there is no cheaper gas). Gas prices are up 50% nationwide since before the war, according to GasBuddy.
In a separate question, we asked about relative spending on a variety of goods. Twice as many say they are paying more for gas vs. this time last year (56% vs 24%), while most other items were flat. The other big difference was in discretionary purchases like dining, where we are cutting back.
