If you’re driving around and you see a car with a President Donald Trump bumper sticker, you’d probably figure the person driving it voted for the president.
Similarly, if you had neighbors with Kamala Harris/Tim Walz signs in their yard last fall, you’d likely assume they marked their ballots for the former vice president.
But a new study from the University of Arizona challenges those assumptions. Researchers looked at the correlation between people who buy political merchandise and people who end up voting for the candidates whose merchandise they buy. And the story is more complicated than you might think.
Anastasiya Ghosh is a co-author of the study and joined The Show to talk about it.
Full conversation
ANASTASIYA GHOSH: I have seen personally a lot more of my friends and my family members who started purchasing merchandise. So I kind of started paying also attention about how many campaigns have actively started to advertise political merchandise and how popular some items have become and, like, literally sold out.
So, to me, it was a very interesting topic of where my work intersects — which is marketing — and politics, which is more of a hobby for me. Where those two things come together and sort of the line between consumerism and politics kind of becoming smaller and smaller.
SAM DINGMAN: And do you feel like — as somebody who studies marketing professionally and has a hobby in politics, as you put it — do you feel like there is some sort of tipping point that you have noticed where political merchandizing became more mainstream? I know a lot has been made of the red MAGA hat. Do you attribute it to that, or do you think it started before then?
GHOSH: I think it’s always existent. I think it never existed to this magnitude. I would go back to the 2008 election, right? All the merchandise, the “Hope” shirts with Barack Obama, where it moved from just being kind of a fringe industry for a while, really small, to something that then became mainstream.
DINGMAN: So tell us how you and your team conducted this study. What did you look at?
GHOSH: So we were interested with this phenomenon: Why do people choose to buy those items — political merchandise items — as opposed to just simply making a donation to the candidates? Maybe the people who do a T-shirt instead of a donation are better supporters. So, we kind of actually started with the opposite prediction of what we found.
DINGMAN: Right. Right, because what you found is people who buy those merchandise items — T-shirts, hats, mugs, bumper stickers — are engaging in what the study calls “political slacktivism.”
GHOSH: Well, what we were interested in looking at is the small purchase, a small donation is, of course, important for campaigns. But what really matters is when you volunteer for a campaign, when you pick up a phone and call others, to show up at the rally. Or ultimately, the most important thing is you show up to vote.
So, what we find is that people who made a donation to a campaign in the form of merchandise, as opposed to just what we call a silent donation, were less likely than to engage in those more important candidate support activities, all the way up to being less likely to vote.
DINGMAN: Right. And the number there was striking, right? It was in particular with the 2020 election, people who bought political merchandise were 91% less likely to vote.
GHOSH: Yes, compared to someone who gave an equivalent silent donation. So of course, both groups of people, the ones who buy merchandise or make donations, are more likely to vote in general than any random person who never was engaged in a campaign at all. But if we’re looking at supporters, the campaigns should really focus on those who make donations, silent donations, then those who get those MAGA hats.
DINGMAN: Right. So what does this suggest to you about the ways campaigns are spending their money?
GHOSH: I think merchandise has a place. And if you think about a campaign as a long-term cycle, right? At the beginning you’re really interested in and rallying your base and maybe attracting independents. And it’s all about signaling. So at that time, even though you get less money out of selling merchandise, it’s beneficial because the more people wear your T-shirt with your name, the more potential exposure you get, right?
But as campaigns draw to a close, what you’re really interested in is those really heavy action items: volunteering and calling on the day to make sure people show up at the polls, and ultimately go and vote. So our recommendation is you can start with this — especially if you’re an underdog candidate, not a lot of people know about you — but as you get closer to the vote, you really should be focusing on silent donations and not merchandise.
DINGMAN: But that’s interesting. It’s making me think back to the Obama example that you cited at the beginning of our conversation. It hadn’t occurred to me in that moment, but what was really remarkable about those “Hope” T-shirts and stickers, as I recall, is that they did not include Barack Obama’s name. It was just the word hope.
GHOSH: And I do have another working paper that we’re working on where we kind of take even one step further ... and supporters of what kind of candidate is more likely to buy merchandise. And we find that underdogs disproportionately attract merchandise purchases.
DINGMAN: Oh, interesting. Because the other question here, I think, is if the folks who bought this merchandise were less likely to actually participate in the campaign or indeed vote, why were they doing it? What did they get out of their purchase?
GHOSH: Yeah. So, we believe that the psychological process there — and it’s related to the idea of slacktivism — is that people who bought merchandise felt like they did more for the candidate already. So they’re less likely to follow up with other meaningful actions.
And in some situations, that may be true. If I’m going to wear a T-shirt of my candidate, and I live in a state that supports the opposite candidate, obviously it’s a pretty big signaling from me. I’m doing a lot, right?
We even had a nice experiment in the paper, where everybody got merchandise, but we manipulated whether they were observed by others or not. So, they were kind of walking through an empty store versus a store filled with people. And only when the store was filled with people that’s where we find an effect. People felt like others observe me, I already did a lot for my candidate by signaling my affiliation to my support, and I don’t need to do anything else.
DINGMAN: This, if I’m not mistaken, is related to a phrase in the study that I was very interested in, which is “impression management.”
GHOSH: So, impression management means how do other people see when I signal in my identity? How do they perceive me? And it’s a pretty strong signal when I literally wear my identity on my sleeve, in this case.
DINGMAN: Yeah. There you go. Did you look at all at party affiliation amongst the the folks that you spoke to?
GHOSH: We did. We didn’t find any difference.
DINGMAN: OK. So it’s not like Democrats are more likely to buy T-shirts and not vote than Republicans are.
GHOSH: No. And if you think about most of our elections, these are the people that candidates are fighting for. They’re not fighting for the strong supporters. They’re fighting for people on the fringes, who maybe I’ll buy a $20 T-shirt, but I’m not sure how I feel about the candidate.
DINGMAN: Right. The challenge for campaigns based on the findings in this study would seem to be, yes, try to excite that $15 or $20 donor enough to get them to buy some merchandise, but then how do you convert them into —
GHOSH: An actual supporter. Yeah.
