Recently Elon Musk offered incentives for people to sign petitions and point him in the right direction of undecided voters, laying down $1 million a day to win in Pennsylvania. Election scholars agree that these payments would fall in a legal gray area, as it’s illegal to pay someone to vote, but what can this and other election purchases tell us about who will win? Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Recently, Elon Musk offered incentives for people to sign petitions and point him in
00:04the right direction of undecided voters, laying down a million dollars a day to win in Pennsylvania.
00:09Election scholars agree that these payments would fall in a legal gray area, as it's illegal
00:13to pay someone to vote.
00:15In fact, it's even illegal to offer free gifts in exchange for something even as small as
00:19an I Voted sticker.
00:20That has led some companies like Uber and Lyft to give discounts instead, offering cheap
00:24rides on election day, or Krispy Kreme offering free donuts to every guest, and an I Voted
00:29sticker to early voters.
00:30But election merch is a big business that goes beyond stickers, and in fact American
00:34election merch sales might be able to tell us more about who will win than political
00:38analysts can.
00:39Steve Ferber, who co-owns a company that sells election merch, says that in 9 of the last
00:4411 elections, their sales successfully predicted the outcomes of the elections.
00:48The only outliers were in 2000, when Gore sold more merchandise, and it's worth mentioning,
00:52also attained more of the popular vote while losing on an electoral college technicality.
00:57And in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.
01:00Ferber adds that Trump was outselling Biden more than 2 to 1, but after Harris took over
01:04the ticket, she began outselling the GOP candidate 3 to 1.