The MMI team regularly conducts surveys to gather information about a variety of financial topics. Over the past few years, we have conducted original research on the topics of love and money, New Year’s resolutions, college and credit, financial literacy, the economy, regifting, and tax issues. We use information from these surveys to help us create content that we hope is valuable to you (Regiftable.com and FinancialLiteracyMonth.com are great examples).
In preparation for our next survey, I took the time to review some of our past results. One thing that struck me is that we ask respondents about their political affiliation. This small detail is part of the general demographic information we gather about respondents. I have never really considered political affiliation as it relates to our survey questions before (this is quite surprising since, once upon a time, we even considered differences based on a person’s astrological sign!), so I decided to delve into the data a bit.
For the most part, there were not significant differences in how Democrats, Republicans, and Independents answer our survey questions. However, I did find that certain financial beliefs and behaviors did differ. Disclaimer: this data is provided for information purposes—I will leave you to draw your own conclusions!
From our Love and Money survey, December 2009
We asked respondents to rate a number of personal traits that could have an impact on a relationship. “Job security” was rated highly by significantly more by Democrats.
From our New Year’s Resolution survey, December 2009
More Republicans than Democrats or Independents said that they set financial resolutions.
From our Back to School survey, August 2009
Significantly more Democrats than Republicans think that parents should increase savings to help with their children’s college finances.
From our Financial Literacy Month survey, May 2009
When asked what impact (if any) the economic downturn was having on their spending and saving habits, more Democrats said that they are spending more and saving less than their Republican and Independent counterparts.
From our Recession survey, May 2008
When asked to define the word “recession,” the textbook definition of “decline in economic growth” was chosen by more Republicans (37% vs. 28% of Democrats and 31% of Independents). “Decreased job security…” – which is part of the definition of a recession – was named by more Democrats (17%) and Independents (18%) than Republicans (10%).
More Democrats reported that they’re feeling an economic pinch – 91% of them say they’re affected by recent conditions compared to 84% of Republicans.
When asked what extreme sacrifices they would make if the economic downturn were to continue, those who said they would take on an additional job were primarily Democrats (48% vs. 37% of Republicans and 32% of Independents).
From our Regifting survey, October 2007
More Democrats (23% vs. 19% of Republicans and 16% of Independents) said they were considering regifting.
When asked who was likely to be on the receiving end their regift, significantly more Republicans named family members.
From our Tax Time survey, January 2007
Of those who expected to owe taxes, significantly more Republicans (69%) said they would use funds from a checking or savings account compared to Democrats (49%) or Independents (39%).
What do you think? Are the differences even worth noting? If you were writing questions for next survey, what would you ask?
Note: All surveys were conducted by phone by the research company Cynapsus.