Do presidential elections affect boat sales?
Denison Yacht Sales crunched the numbers and it seems that elections do cause a slowdown in sales, particularly for boats over 50 feet.
For the analysis, the Florida company combined the data on every boat bigger than 20 feet sold by brokers in the United States from 2004 to 2016, provided by Soldboats.com, and separated the election years from the others.
Boat sales were about 5 percent lower during presidential election years than in non-election years.
“We can see that that the numbers in the election years are slightly lower than in other years, on average by 5 percent among all sold boats,” Denison said on its website.
However, examining sales of boats over 50 feet revealed a 10 percent drop during election years. (Denison included December because boat sales that close in December typically go under contract in November.)
“The results are about what we expected,” Denison wrote. “Elections bring an additional factor of uncertainty, which is very important for investments and big purchases. Although there are many other factors that influence boat sales, such as market indexes, real estate and corporate profits, the presidential elections are indeed an additional factor to be considered when we analyze the market and create forecasts.”
