Soaring electricity bills could be the sleeper campaign issue of 2025

Cheap, reliable electricity is no longer a given, with an energy crunch taking hold far and wide, and forecasts showing no price relief in sight. Average bills have jumped over 10 percent since last year in more than a dozen states — with some seeing increases beyond 20 percent — and more rate hikes have already been announced. Voters are demanding solutions, bringing to the forefront issues that long simmered in the political background, including the massive expansion of energy-hungry data centers, obscure surcharges on electric bills and mandates for clean energy generation.

He said voters are confused about whom to blame, often pointing the finger at power companies or regulations that are not necessarily the driving forces behind rates going up.

Both Republicans and Democrats see potential to turn ratepayer angst on their opponents, but candidates are finding assigning blame a challenge amid voter confusion over the causes.

Cassino said there is a common theme in how voters are thinking about the issue: “It is one thing people feel like their governor should have leverage to control.”

Voters in New Jersey and Virginia, who will choose new governors in November, are equally annoyed, campaign officials said, making electricity prices a key issue in states where Democrats have heavily influenced energy policy. Summer rates jumped 21 percent in New Jersey, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and rates for most Virginians will go up an average of 15 percent under increases utility Dominion plans to cover rising fuel costs and infrastructure upgrades.

Residential rates are creeping up in Virginia amid the state’s boom in data centers that are supporting artificial intelligence. Studies reach conflicting conclusions over the role of those data centers in everyone else’s rates, with Dominion pointing to a state study that found they risk pushing prices up in the future but have not yet. But Harrison has made up her mind. She says the tech companies building them need to pay for more of the new energy infrastructure they require.

“It is part of this trend where every time these big companies and monopolies have a problem, they say, ‘Shoot, we can’t figure this out. You are going to have to pay more,’” Harrison said.

The rate hikes come at the same time her health care premiums are going up far more than the three percent raise she got at work this year. Harrison is voting for Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger, who she is confident will put more regulations in place to protect consumers. Spanberger has suggested on the campaign trail that data center companies are not paying their “fair share” and that Trump’s attacks on clean energy projects will lead to more price hikes.

Not all Virginia voters perceive the problem that way.

“Clean energy is driving our bills out of control,” said Daniel Lefebvre, a 68-year-old in Tysons Corner who plans to vote for Republican gubernatorial nominee Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. Like Earle-Sears, Lefebvre blames price spikes on liberal energy policies. Lefebvre believes they were foisted on the state by Democrats who moved to the state during the Obama era, “bringing here the same policies they had in New York and Chicago: higher taxes, more government involvement, more government sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong.”

The confusion over why bills are going up is pushing voters to learn more about the power grid than they ever cared to know.

In New Jersey, a third of Democrats blame utility greed and mismanagement for their high bills, according to the Fairleigh Dickinson poll. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Mikie Sherrill wants to impose a rate freeze.

“On day one of my administration, I am going to declare a state of emergency on utility costs and freeze rate hikes,” she vowed during a debate on Oct. 8. It’s a promise that drew skepticism even from one of Sherrill’s biggest champions, Gov. Phil Murphy (D). He earlier had questioned at a news conference whether the candidate has the authority to carry out such a freeze.

Republicans mostly blame their high power bills on Murphy or the legislature, according to the poll. Sherrill’s GOP opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, wants to unwind state clean energy targets and reopen fossil fuel plants that have closed over the last decade.

None of the players blamed for crushing bills have as much control over rates as they may think. Most of the electricity that flows to homes and businesses in the Mid-Atlantic is part of a multistate pool controlled by a grid operator called PJM Interconnection. The obscure organization sets prices and controls when power plants come online.

PJM is now struggling with the vitriol of multiple governors and political candidates, who are accusing it of gross mismanagement they say is delaying deployment of badly needed plants.

PJM argues demand for power — driven largely by data centers — is skyrocketing at the same time aging power plants are being retired. In New Jersey, six such plants shut down during the tenure of the current governor, though Murphy himself did not order them closed. At the same time, an ambitious plan to replace the power with offshore wind fell apart when developer Orsted abandoned two major projects because of financial challenges.

There are no quick and easy solutions for any state. But that is not stopping candidates from making bold promises, like Sherrill’s vow to freeze rates or Ciattarelli’s promise to pull New Jersey out of a regional compact to cut power plant emissions.

The confusion makes the party that has been in control a particularly vulnerable target. Ciattarelli can frame the problem as one entirely made by the Democrats who have been in charge for years.

“It is an easier narrative for Republicans to sell,” said Cassino, the Fairleigh Dickinson pollster. “It is not necessarily more accurate, but it is easier.”

The reverse is true in Virginia, where prices are going up under a Republican administration. Spanberger, the Democratic candidate, lays blame on Trump for cutting clean energy programs, as well as PJM policies and data centers. She warns an energy crisis is coming to the state.

Her GOP opponent, Earle-Sears, says the solution to runaway rates is gutting the state’s clean energy law.