These swing voters are adding high gas prices into their political calculations

Swing Shift voters, a group of swing voters in swing states who NPR is routinely speaking with through the next several months. Clockwise from top left: Lee from Nevada, Michelle from Michigan, Wally from Georgia, Jason from North Carolina, Evan from Wisconsin, Gerald from Georgia, Colleen, John and Theresa from Pennsylvania. Illustrations by Tara Anand hide caption toggle caption Illustrations by Tara Anand When Colleen in Pennsylvania went to fill up her tank, it was $4.37 a gallon. She wasn't thinking about politics. She was thinking about what she was going to have to give up to keep gassing up her car. "Telling my kiddos, 'we have to cut back on some stuff so that we can pay to put gas in the car and get from point A to point B,'" she said in a voice memo sent to NPR. Colleen is one of about a dozen voters participating in Swing Shift , a project from NPR that will regularly check in with swing voters from swing states. The participants have all voted for candidates from both parties over the years and aren't using their full names so they can speak more freely about politics and, in this case, gas prices, without fear of personal or professional repercussions. Colleen voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and Trump in 2020. In her voice memo, she said she doesn't feel like political leaders are showing enough concern about the impact of high gas prices. "I guess their pockets are deeper than mine," said Colleen. …