Faculty Sponsor: Ryuichiro Izumi
Anthony Ganci
Anthony is a member of the class of 2028 from Massachusetts and completed the QAC Apprenticeship in the summer following his freshman year. At Wesleyan, he is double-majoring in Economics and Math while minoring in Data Analysis. Anthony’s research bridges his previous experience serving on the board of a private polling agency (The Phillips Academy Poll), interest in financial markets, and coursework across Econometrics, Computer Science, and Statistics.
On campus, Anthony is a member of Wesleyan Investment Group, an Orientation Leader, and an International Student Buddy. While away from campus, Anthony enjoys biking, skiing, playing squash, and spending time with family and friends.
Abstract:
This study investigates equity price responses to opinion polls in the 2024 United States presidential election. Treating Donald Trump’s poll share as an indicator of his probability to win, we examine how this information impacts abnormal returns across industries.
Our research focuses on the 2024 U.S. presidential election due to its uncertain pre-election period and conflicting party platforms. We theorize that these two traits boost the market influence of daily election forecasts and facilitate clearer price responses within industries prone to candidate policies.
Using 82 Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) that focus on American companies in specific industries or sectors, we derive abnormal returns for each one from the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). Two panel regressions with ETF fixed effects and clustered standard errors find a significant positive relationship between Trump’s daily change in poll share and abnormal returns. We also discover significant results that indicate the estimated effect varies across industries. Lastly, we utilize an event study for five key events which are found to have statistically and substantially significant effects on the polling data. Examining all eleven State Street sector ETFs, we again observe evidence that these events produce impacts that vary across sectors.
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