EXPERTS ADVISORY

There is a sea of data in polls, surveys and studies focusing on the 2024 presidential election, and it can help to have expert guidance to glean what’s important.

Three University of Michigan researchers share what they’ve learned on the latest episode of the Business & Society podcast, a joint production of the Ross School of Business and Michigan News. Their access to data provides unique insights into the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaigns for the White House—and what is important to voters in this ever-changing election cycle.

They discuss voters’ minds through the results of those polls, surveys and studies they lead or participate in: Erik Gordon through the Michigan Ross Financial Times Poll, Joanne Hsu through the U-M Surveys of Consumers, and Nicholas Valentino through the American National Election Studies.

Identifying this election’s key voting blocs

“The biggest thing we noticed is that the key voting block is probably going to be the Independents,” Gordon said. “We have about an even split between people who are Democrats and Republicans, but 27% or 28% identify themselves as Independents. That’s a really large amount, and whoever wins that vote might well win the election.”

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The role of partisanship

“We asked a question that we would normally not ask in the United States and haven’t asked to my knowledge anything like this in the American National Election Study, which is how important is it for the current political system in the U.S. to remain a democracy?” Valentino said. “Overwhelmingly, both partisans on either side say it is important but what we were really interested in is that there was a difference between Republicans and Democrats, so that Democrats were more likely to say it was important for the U.S. to remain a democracy than Republicans.

“What’s more important to us is that the association between answers to that question and likelihood of turning out to vote was much higher among Democrats than it was among Republicans.”

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Disconnection between inflation stats and the lived experience of voters

“So one of the media narratives I’ve seen is this idea that American consumers have lost touch with reality because they keep complaining about inflation when inflation has come down,” Hsu said. “What we can see is that consumers are fully aware that inflation has slowed down over the last two years. We see that loud and clear in our inflation expectations data.

“However, the share of consumers asserting that high prices continue to erode their personal finances remains extremely high. Those two things are not in contradiction: You can be aware that inflation has slowed down and at the same time you do not feel like you’re thriving because your pocketbook is still being hit by these high prices. Hence, we’re in a situation where consumer attitudes don’t necessarily match this idea of a really strong economy.”

Contact: [email protected]

Business & Society is co-produced by JT Godfrey of the Ross School of Business and Jeff Karoub of Michigan News. The audio engineer is Jonah Brockman. Listen to all episodes of the podcast.