In response to:
O K that makes sense on a large economic scale but does not explain how just the swing states are experiencing the price drop. That would require every Circle K and 7-11 be in cahoots with one of the biggest conspiracies ever. I just don't see how.
Six months ago, we used Google's Fusion Tables to create interactive heat maps to visualize the actual price of a gallon of gasoline across the United States. We're updating that exercise today:
Average Price of a Gallon of Gasoline at the Pump
Our first chart visualizes the average price that consumers are paying per gallon of gasoline at the pump when they fill up their vehicle's gas tanks, as of when we sampled it on 21 October 2012 as recorded by GasBuddy:
all these "middlemen" are one reason why gas is so costly. it also makes it harder to find where the price rise(or fall) is being generated.
I -do- get your point about collusion. But if journalists across the nation can arrange their own collusion via "JournoList" type collectives,I don't see why a national distributor or 2 could not have it's outlets drop their prices for special purposes. It depends on who owns their stock. Soros? possible.