Partisan Bias, Economic Expectations, and Household Spending

Abstract The well-documented rise in political polarization among the U.S. electorate over past 20 years has been accompanied by a substantial increase effect of partisan bias on survey-based measures economic expectations. Individuals have more optimistic view future conditions when they are closely affiliated with party that controls White House, and this tendency increased significantly time. report large shift expectations based affiliation after 2008 2016 elections, but administrative data spending shows no these shifts actual household spending.