Is the vibecession real - or is the survey broken?

Key Points:

• The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey (ICS), widely used to gauge economic outlook, has significant flaws due to its recent shift from phone to online polling and a partisan skew favoring Democrats, leading to misleadingly low consumer sentiment readings.
• The transition to online polling has introduced a nearly nine-point downward bias in the ICS results, as online respondents tend to express more negative views than phone respondents, affecting the comparability of current data with historical trends.
• The ICS sample currently contains disproportionately more Democrats, who tend to report more negative economic views under Republican leadership, while Republican respondents are underrepresented, further skewing the survey results.
• When adjusted for mode effects and partisan composition using data from Pew’s National Public Opinion Reference Survey, the ICS consumer sentiment figures are significantly higher and align more closely with other measures like the Conference Board, Gallup, and YouGov surveys.
• These adjustments suggest that Americans’ economic sentiment today is not as pessimistic as the uncorrected ICS data implies and resembles levels seen during President Obama’s first term rather than the depths of the Great Recession.