Approaching Election Day, Who is Winning the Election Merchandise Race on Amazon?

A national survey from Omnisend shows that 58% of Americans have already purchased or plan to purchase presidential campaign merchandise

CHARLESTON, S.C., Oct. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ --  With less than two weeks before election day, the latest findings from ecommerce marketing platform Omnisend show that Trump's merchandise sales dropped 30% when Harris entered the race, while hers surged 250%, but Trump supporters are outspending Harris supporters more than  3:1. A whopping $140M has been spent on Trump merchandise compared to $41M for Harris among the 11,000+ sellers of Campaign 2024 election swag. 

Flags are by far the most purchased item with 30% or $40M for the Trump buyers, while T-shirts are the most popular for the Harris campaign with 48%, representing nearly $20M in revenue.  Amazon sellers have sold over 1M MAGA hats, bringing in $23M.  Analysis of the data gathered at the end of September also showed that 21% of Trump merch on Amazon contains negative keywords like "anti" and "sucks" while 9% of Harris merch includes negative words.

What are Americans' election shopping habits?
In a companion survey of 1,000 Americans, it was found that 58% of Americans have or plan to buy merch and the places where they buy it are:

• Amazon (57%)
• Walmart (27%)
• eBay (21%)
• Official Campaign Websites (20%)
• Etsy (14%)
• TikTok Shop (12%)
• Temu (11%)
• AliExpress (6%)
• Other (1%)

The survey also revealed that 65% of Americans regularly purchase election merch. 81% of them do so during the presidential election cycle.

Around two-thirds of Americans buy election merchandise to show their support for the candidate, a third buy merch as a collectible, and a fourth buy merch to influence others. Most Americans feel proud of their political beliefs when buying merch (60%), 32% said that they feel excited to show their support publicly, and 27% said they are confident in their political stance when buying merch.

Typically, Americans spend $10 to $30 on their election merch per election cycle. The most popular items to buy are t-shirts, flags, and hats or caps.

How can ecommerce brands prepare for the presidential elections?
"Not every business can, or should, create something specifically for the presidential election, but it makes sense to stop and think if you have any products you can easily tie to an event in a neutral way," says Greg Zakowicz, Senior Ecommerce Expert at Omnisend.

Zakowicz also says that brands don't need to create politically charged products to participate in election season. Instead, they can design general, election-themed products that appeal to a wide audience without alienating potential customers.

"Brands can connect with customers by focusing on universal values and themes related to civic engagement, such as voting or community involvement," said Zakowicz. "This approach ensures broad appeal without polarizing your audience."

Methodology:
The research of election merchandise on Amazon was done using the Jungle Scout software, analyzing the number of estimated sales, revenue, and prices for items with the keywords "Trump", "Biden", then "Kamala". The research took place May - September 2024.

The survey was commissioned by Omnisend and conducted by Cint in August 2024. A total of 1,000 respondents were surveyed across the US. Quotas were placed on age, gender, and place of residence to achieve a nationally representative sample among users. The margin of error is +/-3 percent.      

About Omnisend
Omnisend is an email & SMS marketing platform with a suite of features made specifically to help ecommerce stores grow their online businesses faster. One-click integration with major ecommerce platforms, pre-made automation & email templates, and award-winning 24/7/365 live customer support make it easy for brands of any size to sell more—all without the exaggerated cost.

"Great marketing needs to be expensive" is a myth that 100,000+ Omnisend customers are busting every day by growing their businesses with email and SMS marketing."

For further information, please contact:
Darija Grobova, PR Manager, [email protected]

SOURCE Omnisend