Partisanship’s a Helluva Drug — And It’s Reshaping the Economy

To test whether partisans used surveys to express their true beliefs about the economy or instead engaged in expressive reporting after the 2016 presidential election, we relied upon online search data from Bing in conjunction with survey data from MSN to estimate partisan purchasing behavior both before and after the election (all data used in this study was both anonymous and opt-in).

Time and again, search data have been shown to be strongly associated with real-world behavior, especially purchasing behavior. It’s a powerful predictor of economic activity—used to accurately predict a variety of economic indicators, including the stock market, automobile sales and housing prices—and is a significantly better predictor of consumption than consumer confidence indices.

For the purposes of our study, though, search is particularly useful because it assesses whether partisans actually changed their behavior, not just their opinions, during the post-election period. If partisan survey responses are just expressive reporting, there should be no change in searches for houses or cars. If, on the other hand, partisan survey responses represent genuine perceptions of the economy, this should be reflected in partisans’ search patterns.

Our study found that after Trump’s election, Democrats, as members of the losing party, became less likely to purchase cars and invest in real estate, as demonstrated by search patterns, even when controlling for geographic and demographic variation. And despite Republicans’ extremely high reported confidence in the economy, our study did not find a meaningful change in their purchasing patterns—all of which suggests that the positive consumer confidence numbers Trump likes to cite may not accurately represent many Americans’ economic experiences or behavior.

Link here.