Overview
We have been using ‘alternative’ data to analyze elections, economics and financial markets for years. And, rarely have we seen as wide an enthusiasm gap as we do currently between Trump and Biden. As we have stated many times, this should be a major red flag for Democrats but this topic has continued to go mostly unnoticed by the consensus. As it relates to the 2020 election, we believe that Trump’s chances are being sorely underestimated.
Alternative data sources include social media, search trends, internet traffic, on-line purchases, and others. Such data is used to calculate a variety of metrics including estimates of interest, support, enthusiasm, and influence. In our on-line heavy society, incorporating such information into political analysis should be the norm, but it is not. In fact, polls and pundit analysis still dominate while mostly ignoring any form of alternative data.
In order to show the usefulness of these data, we will highlight some basic trends, many of which readers can verify for themselves.
Amazon Political-Themed Sales
Once every four years, supporters of the different candidates buy items in order to show their enthusiasm. This ritual includes yard signs, t-shirts, hats, flags and bumper stickers.
If you knew which candidate’s items were selling better, you would have a pretty good idea of support levels, right? Perhaps if the numbers were close, you might not exactly know which side would win, but you would have a good idea which side at least had more enthusiasm, which in most cases indicates the eventual winner.
This common sense logic is straightforward. There are no bells and whistles here.
As Amazon is by far the largest on-line retailer in the US and as they list their 100 top selling items by category, we can get a fairly good idea how each product is doing.
For our analysis, we look at the number of reviews for each product in the top 100 list. For Trump-themed products, they must include 2020 or infer that the product is for the election and not just a pro-Trump item. For instance, we do not include “Make America Great Again” hats, t-shirts, bumper stickers, banners, etc. However, if that same item had a 2020 on it, we would include it. For Biden-themed products, we do not use the same filter as any item that mentions Biden is most likely in function of the 2020 election.
The items we highlight include Amazon Best Sellers in the following categories:
Summary of Results
Each of the main candidates should have approximately 50% of the customer reviews for items deemed supportive of either candidate for the 2020 election. If the results vary too much from that mid-point, it could indicate lopsided enthusiasm.
Table 1: Number of Customer Reviews from Political-Themed Products on Amazon Best Sellers Top 100 List
| Trump | Biden | Biden / Total | |
| Yard Signs | 1,985 | 903 | 31% |
| Bumper Stickers, Decals & Magnets | 1,198 | 523 | 30% |
| Men’s Novelty T-shirts | 2,736 | 20 | 1% |
| Women’s Novelty T-shirts | 778 | 12 | 2% |
| Men’s Hats and Caps | 5,510 | 187 | 3% |
| Women’s Accessories | 1,161 | 0 | 0% |
| Outdoor Flags & Banners | 21,588 | 195 | 1% |
Source: Amazon, ZettaCap
Of the seven categories highlighted, Biden only comes close in two – Yard Signs and Bumper Stickers. On a positive note, these traditionally are two of the most important political products around election-day. However, even in these categories, Biden hits only about 30% of the total, implying lower enthusiasm.
The remaining five categories show anemic sales for Biden. In fact, the results are overwhelmingly lopsided in favor of Trump.
Currently, it looks like Trump supporters are far more enthusiastic. When looking across a broad selection of products, there are only limited indications showing support for Biden.
Glimmer of Hope for Biden?
Overall, the Amazon sales figures look bleak for Biden. As mentioned five of the seven categories depict a lopsided view of the race. However, there is a glimmer of hope.
Many new pro-Biden yard signs have appeared on the top 100 list for that category. In fact, the number one item on the list is a Biden / Harris 2020 sign. Actually, there are four pro-Biden signs in the top 10, the same number as pro-Trump signs. This could be a short-term phenomenon as the increase occurred soon after the announcement of Harris as the Democrat’s VP candidate. Additionally, the pro-Biden items still have relatively few customer reviews, implying absolute sales figures might not be as high as implied by their short-term sales rank.
A similar, though much more diluted trend, seems to be occurring with bumper stickers. The highest ranked political-themed bumper sticker is a pro-Biden one, though again with relatively few reviews.
It looks like, for these two categories, Biden has received a post-VP announcement / post-convention bounce. We will have to follow these trends to see what unfolds in September. As of right now, we do not see this as an overall trend as it has only occurred in two of the seven product categories. Further, in those two categories the quickly gaining items in sales rank have not produced high customer review numbers – implying a short-term spike. In reality though, the best approach is simply to watch this data over the next month.
Counter Arguments
Every form of analysis, even polls, has weaknesses and potential counter-arguments. Amazon sales data is no different. We highlight some of the counter-arguments and weaknesses below.
Only Top 100
We do not incorporate all sales data, only those that make the top 100 list created by Amazon. This could in theory create a skew in favor of Trump as his campaign has been around longer so products in support of him could have an advantage in making the top 100. This is possible, but Biden has been the presumed Democratic candidate for about 5 months making this unlikely to produce such a lopsided result across a variety of product categories.
Pandemic Impact
With many people presumably voting by mail this election and with many people having much reduced contact with others due to the pandemic, it is possible that political supporters might have reduced their purchases of political-themed items. These are valid counter-arguments, however, the lopsidedness of sales is still significant.
Recession Impact
There could also be an impact of the recession on such non-essential political-themed items. It is very possible that this has had an impact. However, keep in mind that many of the products listed here, such as t-shirts, hats, flags (banners), bumper stickers, and yard signs cost less than $20, making this counter-argument less likely.
Democratic Ticket Recent
Harris was just recently confirmed as the Democratic ticket’s VP. It is possible that people have held off buying Democratic supportive items. For instance, maybe they wanted the full ticket to appear on their yard signs, so have waited. This counter-argument is possible, and could have lessened sales over the previous months. However, in an election where both sides are claiming it is ‘the most important election in our lifetimes’ we might assume sales would not have been so low prior to the VP being announced.
Customer Reviews Misleading
It is correct that not all customers leave reviews and that it is an imperfect way of estimating sales. However, the very fact of customers leaving reviews is an indirect way of measuring enthusiasm. Perhaps if the data implied a more even split between candidates, a closer look at customer review data might be warranted, but the lopsided nature of the data argues against it.
Customer Review Data Delayed
Of all the counter-arguments, this is likely the best one. Customers do not leave their reviews immediately and we are expecting an increase in Biden-supportive customer reviews over the next month as sales have increased post-convention. A likely scenario is that we will see an increase for Biden in September as more customers leave reviews having received products purchased post- convention. The main problem we see here is the tremendous amount of ground that Biden would need to pick up in many different categories. It looks unlikely but again of all the counter-arguments this one seems the most relevant. This could especially be the case for yard signs and bumper stickers, the two categories which have received significant boosts of Biden-themed products over the last month in the top 100 list while producing relatively few customer reviews. In contrast, we see little data indicating a similar effect in the other product categories.
Data Manipulation
One of the counter-arguments we hear most often is that on-line data can be and is manipulated. At times such data can be distorted over brief periods but the wide breadth of data that we use to confirm trends would be almost impossible to manipulate for anyone but the companies hosting or providing the data. By looking for instance at trends in social media, search, internet traffic, and on-line sales, we can effectively dilute any attempt by any group to manipulate data or ‘to swing an election’. And, according to our analysis covering a variety data sources, Trump’s support base is far more enthusiastic.
September Data
We are looking forward to seeing the trends unfold in September. So far, Amazon sales has shown much greater absolute figures for Trump-themed products whereas Biden has a few glimmers of hope in yard signs and bumpers stickers.
September’s data will let us know if the current slightly improved pro-Biden outlook in these two categories is more due to pent up demand that was realized after the Harris announcement or to a new / larger pro-Biden trend being established.
Regardless, pro-Biden products have a lot of catching up to do until election-day to pull this even, at least according to Amazon sales data.