Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Do Partisans Make Different Investment Decisions When Their Party is in Power?

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Political Behavior Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Partisans’ stated beliefs about the economy vary dramatically depending on the party that holds the presidency. Do these responses represent genuine differences in beliefs about the economy, or do they reflect partisans’ expressive reporting on surveys? To answer this question, we rely on a novel dataset of Bing searches related to housing, automobiles, and stock market purchases by partisans from February 2016 to July 2017. We find that in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Democrats, as members of the losing party, were modestly less likely to search for both house and car purchase terms. Republicans showed no change. This shift in investment behavior among Democrats suggests that partisans’ survey responses are at least partially due to different beliefs about the economy, rather than just expressive reporting.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

Explore related subjects

Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.

Data Availability

Replication data and code is available through github. Please email David@ResearchDMR.com or davidmr@microsoft.com for access.

Notes

  1. Selective media exposure could also influence presidential in partisans to engage in different consumption behavior than out partisans. Republicans who consume Breitbart and Fox News may be treated to non-stop coverage of the Trump administration’s economic successes, while Democrats who consume HuffPost and Daily Kos may receive the opposite message. However, selective exposure to partisan news coverage has shown at best only modest effects on political polarization (Peterson et al., 2021; Prior 2013).

  2. Content automatically labelled by Bing as adult.

  3. County level covariates come from the 2016 ACS. As part of the data release process with Microsoft, we were asked to round some geographic covariates (to ensure that no PII could be created from the data).

  4. For example, a user who uses Bing only in October of 2016 will make it into the dataset as described in Table 3 and the post-election analysis, but not into the main seasonality analysis. Please see Online Appendix for a modified version of Table 3 that describes these searchers only.

  5. For more information on how we compiled the Gallup survey time series, please see Online Appendix.

  6. Counting partisan leaners as Independents under a 3-point model of party ID does not meaningfully change the results.

  7. The regressions upon which these plots are based, available in Tables A4–A5 in the Online Appendix, are identical to the regressions in Table 4 in all but their party ID measure.

  8. To arrive at this number, we looked at combinations of the following covariates: age, gender, county racial com- position, county education, county income, county density, day of the week fixed effects, and month fixed effects. We did not include state fixed effects in this robustness check, as including them would increase the necessary com- putation time by a factor of 8x. However, given the results, it is unlikely that their inclusion would substantially change the results.

  9. For a more detailed breakdown by partisanship, please see Online Appendix.

  10. To see the raw proportions of Dems and Reps who search for the three categories of terms, please see Online Appendix.

References

  • Bansak, K., Hainmueller, J., Hopkins, D. J., & Yamamoto, T. (2018). The number of choice tasks and survey satisficing in conjoint experiments. Political Analysis, 26(1), 112–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bartels, L. M. (2002). Beyond the running tally: Partisan bias in political perceptions. Political Behavior, 24(2), 117–150.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bartels, L. M. (2016). Unequal democracy. Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Berinsky, A. J. (2018). Telling the truth about believing the lies? Evidence for the limited prevalence of expressive survey responding. The Journal of Politics, 80(1), 211–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bisgaard, M. (2019). How getting the facts right can fuel partisan-motivated reasoning. American Journal of Political Science, 63(4), 824–839.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bordino, I., Battiston, S., Caldarelli, G., Cristelli, M., Ukkonen, A., & Weber, I. (2012). Web search queries can predict stock market volumes. PLoS ONE, 7(7), e40014.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bullock, J. G., Gerber, A. S., Hill, S. J., & Huber, G. A. (2013). Partisan bias in factual beliefs about politics. Technical report, National Bureau of Economic Research.

  • Choi, H., & Varian, H. (2012). Predicting the present with google trends. Economic Record, 88(s1), 2–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conover, P. J., Feldman, S., & Knight, K. (1986). Judging inflation and unemployment: The origins of retrospective evaluations. The Journal of Politics, 48(3), 565–588.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Converse, P. E., Miller, W. E., Stokes, D. E., et al. (1960). The American voter. Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dunn, W. E. (1998).Unemployment risk, precautionary saving, and durable goods purchase decisions. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/da48/24755959310c808e784b9bf55372160fd953.pdf.

  • Fisher, R. J. (1993). Social desirability bias and the validity of indirect questioning. Journal of Consumer Research, 20(2), 303–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gelman, A. (2009). Red state, blue state, rich state, poor state: Why Americans vote the way they do. Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gerber, A. S., & Huber, G. A. (2009). Partisanship and economic behavior: Do partisan differences in economic forecasts predict real economic behavior? American Political Science Review, 103(3), 407–426.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gift, K., & Gift, T. (2015). Does politics influence hiring? Evidence from a randomized experiment. Political Behavior, 37(3), 653–675.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gultekin, M. N., & Gultekin, N. B. (1983). Stock market seasonality: International evidence. Journal of Financial Economics, 12(4), 469–481.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gyourko, J., & Linneman, P. (1997). The changing influences of education, income, family structure, and race on homeownership by age over time. Journal of Housing Research, 8, 1–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huber, G. A., & Malhotra, N. (2017). Political homophily in social relationships: Evidence from online dating behavior. The Journal of Politics, 79(1), 269–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iyengar, S., & Westwood, S. J. (2015). Fear and loathing across party lines: New evidence on group polarization. American Journal of Political Science, 59(3), 690–707.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iyengar, S., Sood, G., & Lelkes, Y. (2012). Affect, not ideologya social identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(3), 405–431.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iyengar, S., Konitzer, T., & Tedin, K. (2017). The home as a political fortress; family agreement in an era of polarization. Technical report, Working Paper. https://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2017/iyengar-home-political-fortress.pdf.

  • Kholodilin, K. A., Podstawski, M., & Siliverstovs, B. (2010). Do google searches help in nowcasting private consumption? A real-time evidence for the us. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1615453

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kinski, A. (2016). Google trends as complementary tool for new car sales forecasting: A cross- country comparison along the customer journey. Master’s Thesis, University of Twente.

  • Konitzer, T., Allen, J., Eckman, S., Howland, B., Mobius, M. M., Rothschild, D. M., & Watts, D. (2021). Comparing estimates of news consumption from survey and passively collected behavioral data. Public Opinion Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfab023

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kramer, G. H. (1983). The ecological fallacy revisited: Aggregate-versus individual-level findings on economics and elections, and sociotropic voting. American Political Science Review, 77(1), 92–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kreps, S., Prasad, S., Brownstein, J. S., Hswen, Y., Garibaldi, B. T., Zhang, B., & Kriner, D. L. (2020). Factors associated with us adultsâ likelihood of accepting covid-19 vaccination. JAMA Network Open, 3(10), e2025594–e2025594.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krupenkin, M., Hill, S., & Rothschild, D. (2018). President trump stress disorder: Partisanship, ethnicity, and expressive reporting of mental distress after the 2016 election. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ac4569925bf02b3f05a651f/t/5ac6a52788251b5152e925ff/1522967847988/MentalHealth%281%29.pdf.

  • Kuklinski, J. H., Cobb, M. D., & Gilens, M. (1997). Racial attitudes and the “new south.” The Journal of Politics, 59(2), 323–349.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McConnell, C., Margalit, Y., Malhotra, N., & Levendusky, M. (2018). The economic consequences of partisanship in a polarized era. American Journal of Political Science, 62(1), 5–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McGrath, M. C., et al. (2017). Economic behavior and the partisan perceptual screen. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 11(4), 363–383.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michelitch, K., Morales, M., Owen, A., & Tucker, J. A. (2012). Looking to the future: Prospective economic voting in 2008 presidential elections. Electoral Studies, 31(4), 838–851.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Milosh, M., Painter, M., Sonin, K., Van Dijcke, D., & Wright, A. L. (2020). Unmasking partisanship: Polarization undermines public response to collective risk. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3664779

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ngai, L. R., & Tenreyro, S. (2014). Hot and cold seasons in the housing market. American Economic Review, 104(12), 3991–4026.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nicholson, S. P., Coe, C. M., Emory, J., & Song, A. V. (2016). The politics of beauty: The effects of partisan bias on physical attractiveness. Political Behavior, 38(4), 883–898.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nunns, J., Burman, L., Rohaly, J., & Rosenberg, J. (2016). An analysis of Donald Trumpâs revised tax plan. Tax Policy Center. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/analysisdonald-trumps-revised-tax-plan.

  • Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010). When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions. Political Behavior, 32(2), 303–330.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, E., Goel, S., & Iyengar, S. (2021). Partisan selective exposure in online news consumption: Evidence from the 2016 presidential campaign. Political Science Research and Methods, 9(2), 242–258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinna, M., Picard, L., & Goessmann, C. (2021). Cable news and covid-19 vaccine compliance. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3890340

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prior, M. (2013). Media and political polarization. Annual Review of Political Science, 16, 101–127.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prior, M., Sood, G., & Khanna, K. (2015). You cannot be serious: The impact of accuracy incentives on partisan bias in reports of economic perceptions. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 10(4), 489–518.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Redlawsk, D. P. (2002). Hot cognition or cool consideration? Testing the effects of motivated reasoning on political decision making. Journal of Politics, 64(4), 1021–1044.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(4), 296–320.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schaffner, B. F., & Luks, S. (2018). Misinformation or expressive responding? What an inauguration crowd can tell us about the source of political misinformation in surveys. Working Paper. http://people.umass.edu/schaffne/Schaffner_Luks_POQ_forthcoming.pdf.

  • Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755–769.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, K.-Y. (2019). Race for profit: How banks and the real estate industry undermined black homeownership. UNC Press Books.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tian, Y., Liu, Y., Xu, D., Yao, T., Zhang, M., & Ma, S. (2012). Incorporating seasonal time series analysis with search behavior information in sales forecasting. In Proceedings of the 21st international conference on world wide web (pp. 615–616). ACM.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Vrkljan, B. H., & Anaby, D. (2011). What vehicle features are considered important when buying an automobile? An examination of driver preferences by age and gender. Journal of Safety Research, 42(1), 61–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wu, L., & Brynjolfsson, E. (2015). The future of prediction: How google searches foreshadow housing prices and sales. In Economic analysis of the digital economy (pp. 89–118). University of Chicago Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Xu, Y., Johnson, C., Bartholomae, S., O’Neill, B., & Gutter, M. S. (2015). Homeownership among millennials: The deferred American dream? Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 44(2), 201–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Young, C., & Holsteen, K. (2017). Model uncertainty and robustness: A computational framework for multimodel analysis. Sociological Methods & Research, 46(1), 3–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zaller, J. R., et al. (1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This research did not use any external funding.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Boston College Political Science Department, McGuinn Hall 201, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467, USA

    Masha Krupenkin

  2. Columbia Marketing Department, 3022 Broadway, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Shawndra Hill

  3. Microsoft Research NYC, 641 6th Ave, New York, NY, 10011, USA

    David Rothschild

Authors
  1. Masha Krupenkin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Shawndra Hill
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. David Rothschild
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Masha Krupenkin.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (DOCX 2673 KB)

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Krupenkin, M., Hill, S. & Rothschild, D. Do Partisans Make Different Investment Decisions When Their Party is in Power?. Polit Behav (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-023-09883-w

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-023-09883-w

Keywords

Search

Navigation