In fact, higher gas prices resulting from foreign oil shocks haven’t always worsened presidential approval ratings. Take, for example, the 1990 oil shock, which was caused by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2 of that year. Even as the price of oil spiked, former president George H.W. Bush’s approval jumped over 16 percentage points in less than a month as the international community swiftly condemned Iraq’s actions, and it rose again after the U.S.-led intervention in early 1991. Moreover, the price of oil returned to roughly prior levels in less than a year.

It’s unlikely that Biden will see this kind of upswell in his presidential approval rating, but it is true that we haven’t yet seen a drop in his presidential approval to accompany the long lines at the pump — in fact, we’ve seen the opposite. Biden’s approval today is about the same as it was at the start of the Ukraine crisis and has actually rebounded since the initial days of the invasion, a period of time over which prices have risen considerably. He could be seeing a bump from his State of the Union address and from the Ukraine crisis itself, and as Krosnick noted, U.S. presidential approval often responds positively to international conflicts — even if big swings in approval are mostly a thing of the past.