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Voting With Our Wallets
Bottom Line: Turns out we’re voting with our wallets in records numbers. I don’t know if any companies have gone broke from going woke yet, but there’s no doubt there’s been a financial price some have paid. On the back of this week’s NBC polling showing Governor DeSantis having more Americans who hold a “very positive” view of him than Disney, with a grand total of only 33% of the country still having a positive opinion of Disney overall, I’ve been intrigued. Has the pendulum finally swung? Have Americans finally had enough of the political nonsense from corporate America that they’ve really started to vote with their wallets? The answer appears to be yes. And the change has happened fast.
As I mentioned at the onset of the Disney’s decision to go woke, a 2020 study by CompareCards aimed at determining how many of us really do get fed up enough with companies to stop doing business with them, found 40% of us do personally “boycott” at least one brand. And the top two reasons cited for the boycotting of those brands – a disagreement with the company’s political stance & a disagreement with the company’s social stance. Well, that was 2020. As it turns out a lot has happened in two years.
The Trafalgar Group has found something just about all Americans can agree on. Putting our money where our mouth is. Trafalgar found 87% of Americans are now likely to stop using a product or service that openly advocates for a political agenda we disagree with. And if nearly nine in ten are in agreement albeit from differing political angles, you know it runs the political gambit. Here’s the breakout by political affiliation:
- Democrats: 85%
- Independents: 83%
- Republicans: 93%
Clearly, we’re almost all motivated by politics these days but none more so than Republicans. In this context the Disney debacle takes on added emphasis. Florida’s leading political party by voter registration is the Republican party. Florida’s popular governor is Republican. It's implausible for Disney to not have been negatively impacted financially by this decision in Florida – aside from the rest of the country. The shift has happened fast with a doubling of the change in consumer behavior in just two years. Disney’s now lost 33% of its value year-to-date, performance that’s twice as poor as the S&P 500. It appears the market’s telling a story and it’s likely related to our having been voting with our wallets.