November’s consumer sentiment data from the University of Michigan is out. Big picture, Americans feel pretty much the same as they felt about the economy last month — which is to say, bad. Folks are most sour about inflation, incomes and the stock market. 

One thing about consumer sentiment surveys in general is they’ve been increasingly impacted 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. Hector Sandoval, director of the Economic Analysis Program at the University of Florida, said historically, the first was a good predictor of the second.

“Before the pandemic it worked perfectly,” he said.

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. Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan, said one way to better gauge sentiment is 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,” Hsu said.

In other words, the independents do seem truly independent.

Hsu said the survey records what party respondents currently lean toward. Over time, many flip back and forth. 

This sort of volatility is why Sofia Baig, senior economist at Morning Consult, said answers about how people are feeling now are more accurate and less partisan than answers about long-run expectations. 

“Because you probably voted for or support the economic vision of whatever party is in power and then feel better about the future,” she said.

Or the opposite. You didn’t vote for the party in power so you think things will get worse.

Baig said what is notable is when this trend breaks. Morning Consult’s survey shows Republican sentiment is in sharp decline.

“Through a lot of what was going on in the early days of the Trump administration, they continued to be more and more optimistic about the economy, but now it’s been going down pretty steadily since June,” she said.

Even though their party is in power.