Florida Gas Eased a Cent Overnight: AAA Puts Monday's State Average at $3.86, Against $4.17 Nationally

Florida drivers start the week a fraction better off than they ended it. AAA's daily survey, read this run for Monday, November 2, puts the state's average price for regular gasoline at $3.8594 a gallon, down from yesterday's average of $3.8690. The national average the same morning is $4.1694, which means Florida is pumping about 31 cents a gallon under the country as a whole. AAA's Florida table also lists mid-grade at $4.3087, premium at $4.6493 and diesel at $5.9789 — the diesel figure is the one that quietly prices everything delivered by truck this week.

The local picture runs hotter than the state. The most recent Orlando metro compilation from AAA data, updated today with prices current as of October 26, put the Orlando metro average at $4.10 a gallon, up 6 cents, or 1.4 percent, on its week. That gap — Orlando above the Florida average — is the tourism corridor's usual premium, and it is the number most Central Florida commuters actually pay against. The two figures are carried here at their own dates on purpose: today's state average is today's; the metro figure is a weekly reading, and the next one will move it.

For an Election Day eve, the number that matters politically is simply that the sign says $3.86 and not $4.86. Gas is the price every voter reads from the driver's seat on the way to everything else, and a state average easing — even by a cent — into the last full day of a midterm campaign is the kind of background fact campaigns cannot buy. Tomorrow, several million Floridians will drive to their polling places past those signs, in the rain if the forecast holds, and the drive itself will have cost them a little less than it did last week at the state average, and a little more than the state average here at home.