3 buck gas and a couple of approval points

By Dave Anderson:

Eight months out of the year, I'm indifferent to gasoline prices; I just don't drive much.  During the spring, I drive a lot.  I'm aware of nickel and dime sized variations in the price of 87 octane.  Locally, gas seemed to have peaked at $2.91 to $2.95 a gallon a couple of weeks ago.  Now it is down to about $2.80 a gallon.  That means I'm saving two bucks a week during my "heavy" driving season. 

Political Wire passes along that Obama's approval rating is ticking back upwards.  Gallup has him at 52%, a rise of six points from his low in that poll.  Daily Kos has him at 55%, a rise of three points on their favorable metric.  Pollster.com shows that Obama is back into the net favorables/net approval after spending a couple of weeks in the barely negative favorable/disapproval zone. 

So how are these two things related? 

Here is the Left Business Observer from 2006:

here's a chart that shows the actual approval rating along with the
approval rating predicted by a simple linear regression on the log of
the nominal gasoline price. The results are pretty similar if you use
the actual gas price rather than the log, and the real price instead of
the nominal price; this is just the best fit. The notation that "r²=.78"
means that 78% of the variation in the approval rating can be explained
by movements in the price of gas. The last segment of the (purplish)
projection line is dashed because it uses the estimated October price of
$2.51 to predict October's approval rating of 41%. (Gallup's actual
approval rating, as of September 10, was 39%.)

Is the recent uptick in Obama's popularity due to the extra five to ten bucks a week people who drive a lot and tend to live in the suburbs and the suburb/exurban fringe have in their pockets.  These voters are some of the mythical swing votes.  Is Obama, and any other US president whose economic policy is a propping up of the cheap gas/cheap land FIRE sale economy merely the Chief Gasoline Minister?