Republicans are planning on spending more money than Democrats on presents during the holiday season this year, according to a Quinnipiac poll out Tuesday.
Only 5% of Democrats say they’re spending more than previous years, as opposed to 19% of Republicans in the poll. That’s a reversal from the Obama years when Democrats reported spending more money on Christmas presents and Republicans said they were spending less.
The presents question tracks closely with who is in the White House and was asked in 2001, 2002, 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2018. Every year follows the trend that the opposing party to the president plans on spending less money.
In a November 2014 poll, when Obama was in the White House, 38% of Republicans said they were going to spend less money on gifts that holiday season than the prior year, compared to only a quarter of Democrats who said the same.
The trend continues into the early years of George W. Bush’s tenure, when 22% of Republicans who said they were going to spend less on gifts in December 2002, compared to 42% of Democrats said they would spend less that year.
One likely explanation is that members of a party report that they will spend more or less money when they think the economy is doing well or doing poorly. Right now, 29% of Republicans described the nation’s economy as excellent, compared to only 2% of Democrats, from the same Quinnipiac poll.
