Do elections equal retail uncertainty?

By Claire Moffat

Retailers hate elections, mostly for sound reasons and the concerns are now being voiced loudly.

Myer CEO, Richard Umbers was first out of the blocks when he warned that the election campaign was expected to hit consumer sentiment and negatively affect Myer’s outlook.

However, according to Queensland University of Technology Senior Lecturer, QUT Business School, Gary Mortimer, researchers from Princeton University and the University of Chicago found elections had little impact on how consumers actually spend. In their study, spanning four presidential elections, their initial findings identified a correlation between a voters’ “ideological opposition towards a winning candidate” (measured by a voter-ideology score) and a lower score on the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey.