Business is booming at the world’s largest wholesale market in Yiwu, China, as retailers look for cheap items to stock their shelves.
The city’s international trade center is an extensive network of 70,000 stalls spread over 12 floors.
But it’s not just traders who are watching closely; political observers have their eyes on it a phenomenon they call the ‘Yiwu Index’.
The theory goes that the better a US political candidate’s replica items sell in Yiwu, the better their chances in the upcoming election.
Strikingly, the ‘Yiwu Index’ was a better predictor of Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 than pollsters, who were confident that Hillary Clinton would be the winner throughout the campaign.
With just days until the 2024 elections, Beijing is likely to use the theory in monitoring the race.
Yiwu, China is home to one of the world’s largest wholesale markets in the world. Pictured: A Chinese worker sews a Trump 2020 Keep America Great flag
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Merchandising has long been a big part of political campaigns. While candidates often raise funds from their official gear, foreign outlets have been pumping out replicas of the candidates’ swag, capitalizing on the increasing polarization of American politics.
Yiwu, located in eastern China, is known to provide early insights based on the types of goods it sells ahead of the presidential election.
But the market hasn’t based this on science – and there are vulnerabilities in using the index to predict the outcome.
First, the marketplace rarely sells directly to consumers and relies mainly on wholesalers.
Typically, this era of purchasing allowed retailers to order certain goods en masse in anticipation of a surge in demand – whether that materializes or not.
Trump supporters are also much more likely to display, wear and purchase items that demonstrate their political loyalty than those who support Vice President Kamala Harris – or any other politician.
In 2020, while Chinese-made Trump items outsold those with Joe Biden’s name on them, the latter still claimed victory.
Trump’s signature red Make America Great Again hats are a Yiwu bestseller and are a totem of the former president’s supporters
The so-called Yiwu Index predicts the winner of the American elections based on the amount of goods sold for the opposing candidates
The camouflage Harris-Walz hats also made a big splash in Yiwu, with the first run selling out in just 30 minutes
Recently, in a good sign for Democrats, demand in Yiwu’s market for Harris-Walz campaign camouflage hats increased.
The entire first run was gone just 30 minutes after the sale, according to De Telegraaf.
However, Zoe Liu Zongyuan, of the US-based think tank Council on Foreign Relations, told the newspaper that the index may not be accurate.
“Imagine a scenario where you have a Trump neighbor versus a Democratic neighbor, where the Trump voters are more likely to show their MAGA stuff,” she said.
“Democrats, people who vote independently, or undecided people are less likely to spend money to buy those things. So I would say, because voters’ behavior has changed and the way they show their enthusiasm has changed, the Yiwu Index may no longer be an accurate indicator.”
The Yiwu theory suggests that Trump’s stronger sales compared to his rivals may be an indicator of the likelihood of voter turnout.
“When everyone said the Democrats, Hilary Clinton, would win (in 2016), the index suggested otherwise,” Zongyuan said.
‘It’s not the Chinese who buy this stuff, it’s the Americans, the delegations, the meetings, those people who buy it. Could that be an indicator of how passionate people or voters are? That’s a better way to understand it.’