Republican voters expected higher inflation compared to Democrats, and they got it.
It's common for voters registered with a political party to be more economically pessimistic when their party is not in the White House. However, voters living in more Republican regions have experienced higher prices than voters living where there are more Democratic voters.
"Regions that tend to be redder have experienced higher inflation," said Jane Ryngaert, economics professor at Notre Dame University and co-author of a examining partisanship and inflation.
The results are especially provocative in South Florida, which had the highest regional inflation rate in the nation for months. That title was recently taken over by Dallas. Still, the regional inflation rate was 4.5% in May compared to a year earlier. While that's the slowest rate in more than two years, it remains considerably stronger than the national inflation rate of 3.3%.
How anyone experiences inflation is based upon what they're buying. South Florida's stubbornly high inflation rate can be attributed almost entirely to housing. Homeowners with locked-in mortgages will have a much different experience with their housing costs compared to a renter negotiating an annual lease.
Still, both may buy gas at the same gas station and shop for groceries at the same supermarket.
"It's not the (political) party itself that's affecting what inflation rate they're paying. It's where they live," Ryngaert said.
Economists and the Federal Reserve put a lot of emphasis on inflation expectations. What consumers think about prices in the future influence how they may spend money today, further influencing the direction of inflation. Ryngaert's research found beginning in 2021 Democrats expected inflation to remain stable while Republicans expected prices to rise.
"Republicans," according to the study, "became more uncertain about longer-run inflation, and their expectations unlike Democrats' became more responsive to inflation itself and to gas and energy prices."
Ryngaert and her co-authors also found that as inflation shot higher in 2021 and 2022, Republican voters expected prices to continue marching higher while Democratic voters expected more tepid increases. The national inflation rate peaked at 9% in June 2022. South Florida's topped out at more than 10% two months later.
One theory as to why the significant partisan divide: partisanship itself.
"Consumers who share a political party with the president tend to have lower inflation expectations than those who are the opposite political party of the president," Ryngaert said. "You might call this something like 'own-team bias.'"
South Florida's political hue has been changing. Donald Trump won 34% of the vote in Miami-Dade County in 2016 while carrying the state of Florida and winning the White House. Four years later, he increased his margin in Miami-Dade with 46% of the presidential vote in his losing campaign. Broward and Palm Beach counties have been more consistent over the past several presidential election cycles. About a third of votes in Broward County have been for GOP presidential candidates. It's been about 40% in Palm Beach County.
However, Republicans have been outpacing Democrats in registering voters as the 2024 election nears.
Still, the increase in Republican voters cannot be blamed for South Florida's higher inflation rate. Rather, a more likely significant driver is more mundane 鈥� demand.
"I'm assuming that (the higher regional inflation rate) is because you have people moving in, rather than you have people changing their party alliance that we're already living there," Ryngaert said. "It's the influx of people, period."
