Does who you voted for correlate with your current spending habits?

Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Republicans are reportedly spending more than Democrats post-2024 election, per consumer sentiment reports.
Utah's consumer sentiment index was 88.1, surpassing the national average of 71.8.
Phil Dean noted Utah's consumer sentiment increase may correlate with the presidential election.

SALT LAKE CITY — Republicans are spending more than Democrats, according to a consumer sentiment report published at the beginning of last month by the University of Michigan and more recently by the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

Following the 2024 presidential election, it seems that Americans' spending habits correlated with their political leanings; Utah election results show that 59.38% of Beehive State voters chose President-elect Donald Trump on the ballot compared to 37.79% who had Vice President Kamala Harris on their ticket.

On a national scale, consumer sentiment in November reached 71.8 on the Consumer Sentiment Index, its highest since April. Republican spending increased by 15.5 points, a noticeable political skew from Democrats' 10.1-point drop.

Utah's consumer sentiment in November was higher than the national average by 16.3 points, sitting at 88.1.

The following questions were given to survey recipients by the University of Michigan in October and again in November to gauge consumer sentiment motivations before and after the presidential election:

Would you say that you (or you and your family living there) are better off or worse off financially than you were a year ago?
Do you think that a year from now you (or you and your family living there) will be better off financially, or worse off, or just about the same as now?
About the big things people buy for their homes, such as furniture, a refrigerator, stove, television, and things like that. Generally speaking, do you think now is a good or bad time for people to buy major household items?
Regarding business conditions in the country as a whole, do you think that during the next 12 months we'll have good times financially, or bad times?
Looking ahead, which would you say is more likely, that in the country as a whole we'll have continuous good times during the next five years or so, or that we will have periods of widespread unemployment or depression?

To better understand the local perspective, the Gardner Institute adapted Michigan's survey questions and added two of its own tailored specifically for Utahns:

Regarding business conditions in Utah as a whole, do you think that during the next 12 months we'll have good times financially, or bad times?
Looking ahead, which would you say is more likely, that in Utah we'll have continuous good times during the next five years or so, or that we will have periods of widespread unemployment or depression?

Both responses saw a more than 10-point increase in favorability, meaning survey recipients feel better off financially than they did previously.

"The large monthly change in Utah consumer sentiment appears to be correlated with the presidential election," Phil Dean, chief economist at the Gardner Institute, said.

"Heading into the holiday shopping season, Utahns' consumer sentiment continued in its usual spot higher than U.S. sentiment," Dean told the Deseret News. "Historically, consumer sentiment aligned closely with spending behavior, although that relationship weakened during the pandemic recovery and its period of high inflation.

"Given the very large jump last month, I'm intrigued to see if this trend continues in coming months and the extent to which sentiment aligns with actual consumer behavior. Initially, this jump in sentiment seems like a good sign for retailers hoping for healthy Christmas sales," he said.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.