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Americans feel pretty much the same about the economy this month as they did last month, according to the latest consumer sentiment data — which is to say, bad. The closely watched survey from the University of Michigan found folks are most sour about inflation, incomes and the stock market.
But here’s the thing: consumer sentiment surveys have been increasingly skewed by political partisanship. If your party is in the White House, you’re more likely to feel good about the economy. And if your party isn’t, you’re more likely to feel bad.
The split has become so persistent that some economists have begun to question how much consumer sentiment even matters. There are two kinds of economic numbers. Soft data, like consumer sentiment, and hard data, like consumer spending. The first has historically meant a good predictor of the second. “Before the pandemic it worked perfectly,” said Hector Sandoval, director of the Economic Analysis Program at the University of Florida.
Then came COVID-19, historic inflation and a presidential election. Though political affiliation had always influenced consumer sentiment, the correlation became more pronounced.
“It’s more noisy now that there is some kind of contamination, if you wanna call it that, on how we measure the mood of consumers,” Sandoval said. The mood is moody enough for some economists to question the usefulness of the data. One way to better gauge sentiment might be to hone in on how independents feel, because their confidence tends to land somewhere between that of Democrats and Republicans.
“And that is something that hasn’t changed. We’ve seen that now through across three presidential administrations,” said Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan. In other words, the independents do seem truly independent. | 
