During the 1824 U.S. presidential election, candidate John Quincy Adams is alleged to have printed posters that featured his image and the slogan “Like John Adams, But Quincyer!”

The move has him credited with introducing signage to U.S. political campaigning, and 200 years later, political signs are a mainstay during every major election cycle.

During the months preceding Election Day (and many weeks after), millions of 18-by-24-inch pieces of corrugated plastic, emblazoned with red and blue lettering, dotted lawns and roadsides across the U.S. From the deep blue cities of California to the solidly red towns of Missouri to the ambiguously purple counties of Pennsylvania – wherever you looked, you could find signage supporting President-Elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Such items are a normal sight in any election year, but 2024 was different. As Americans become increasingly rigid in their ideology and subsequently jaded by the echo chamber of social media, the front lawn became the battleground from which the nation’s culture war was waged.

“The more polarized the electorate is, and the more intense the support for candidates becomes, the more important it becomes for people to show their support,” says John Cluverius, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

One of the easiest ways to do that? Put up a yard sign – ASI Media’s 2024 Product of the Year.

Strong Beliefs

The 2024 election cycle was tumultuous, to say the least.

Trump rode out legal woes on the campaign trail and was nearly killed by a gunman’s bullet at a rally in Butler, PA, over the summer. Harris stepped in as the Democratic nominee in place of President Joe Biden with just over 100 days before the election. The last few months of campaigning were fueled by a surge of donations from voters on both sides of the aisle – and an excess of political merchandise – before Trump carried the Electoral College on Nov. 5.

According to YouGov, voters were more enthusiastic about their preferred candidate winning than they have been about nominees in years past. During this year’s election cycle, over three-quarters of Republicans (76%) said they would feel enthusiastic if Trump were to win, compared to 67% in 2020 and 45% in 2016. Two-thirds of Democrats said they felt the same way about Harris, compared to 61% about a Biden win in 2020 and 51% in 2016 for Clinton. The numbers are a sign of both greater investment in the outcome of the 2024 election and the increased polarization that characterizes the political system.

Pew Research Center found that Harris and Trump voters were dramatically far apart on issues such as gun ownership, criminal justice and the role of government. And the number of Americans who identify as “strong Democrats” or “strong Republicans” – as opposed to “weak” or “independent” – has been steadily increasing since the early 2000s, according to American National Election Studies data.

It’s more personal than just disagreeing over policy, too. According to recent research out of Johns Hopkins University, more than half of the U.S. voting population believes members of the opposing party are “downright evil.”

What does all of this have to do with yard signs? Simple: Americans felt especially strong in their beliefs and were willing to broadcast them.

“A good share of voters for both candidates saw the stakes of the election as extremely high,” Cluverius says. “It made the sort of proxy fight over visibility and yard signs seem a lot more intense and a lot more personal.”

“The more polarized the electorate is, and the more intense the support for candidates becomes, the more important it becomes for people to show their support.” John Cluverius, UMass Lowell Political Science Professor

Especially in the modern political era – where supporters often purchase their own yard signs supporting national candidates, rather than receive them from canvassing volunteers – having a yard sign is a direct signal to your surrounding community where you stand on national politics. It’s active support, rather than passive.

“If you put up a lawn sign,” says Tobe Berkovitz, a longtime political media consultant for campaigns in over 25 states and former advertising professor at Boston University, “you’re going to show up to vote.”

Heightened Demand

There’s been a marked shift in the visibility and usage of yard signs this decade. During the pandemic in 2020, with the world confined to its own four walls, yard signs became an essential and desired medium to show support – a way to hail front-line workers, to celebrate school graduates and to promote a message of hope during a time of immense grief. (ESP data shows that yard sign searches spiked in 2020, increasing 36% compared to 2016.) Since then, the public has become increasingly willing to plant a sign to show their support for any cause, political or otherwise.

On the election trail, the bulk of major national candidates’ advertising spend has historically gone toward media buys and television ads, particularly in swing states. Still, if they have the resources, campaigns want to use every tool they have at their disposal, says Berkovitz – and that includes mediums like yard signs.

“The Harris-Walz campaign had unlimited money,” he says. “And Trump – I think Trump just likes to see his name on anything.”

Both candidates certainly had a heightened need for yard signs this election. Harris in particular had just 100 days to promote her candidacy. And while Trump supporters likely already owned a MAGA hat or another piece of gear, what they didn’t have was a Trump 2024 sign.

Correspondingly, ESP searches for yard signs were up 23% this year compared to the 2016 election cycle. And according to e-commerce marketing platform Omnisend, Amazon sellers made $5.8 million just selling Trump signage between April and September of this year.

Ace Specialties (asi/103553), the distributor responsible for the majority of Trump merchandise since the 2016 election and the rise of the MAGA hat, shipped out more than 1 million packages of political swag this election cycle – and signage was in the top three products, says CEO Christl Mahfouz.

At Hanover, PA-based Quinn (asi/80228), sales of standard yard signs more than quadrupled this election compared to 2020, though that figure represents sales across all markets, says Product Coordinator Matthew Wickenheiser.

More notable, though, was Quinn saw a major increase in large-format political signage – not just your typical 18-by-24-inch lawn signs, but flags meant to hang on the sides of buildings or between cranes to be seen from afar. People, Wickenheiser says, wanted to make a statement in a big way.

“The 2024 election was one where everybody wanted to get their name out there,” says Bruce Kolbrener, Quinn’s executive vice president of sales. “I think they recognized – especially with trying to catch people’s attention, which isn’t always easy – bigger is better. More is better.”

“The 2024 election was one where everybody wanted to get their name out there.” Bruce Kolbrener, Quinn (asi/80228)

Demand for signage also meant a market opportunity for more sellers to get in on the action, says Grant Waters of Louisiana-based printer Supreme Color Graphics (asi/90264).

Although there weren’t many competitive local races in Louisiana – the source of most of the printer’s political signage business, Waters says – Supreme Color Graphics still had an uptick in overall signage orders. Waters notes that was thanks to the vast number of smaller orders they received – not from campaigns but from people who wanted to start selling political signage because of the huge public demand.

“We were seeing people order political signage that typically don’t,” he says.

A number of signage suppliers told ASI Media that sales for 2024 were about what they expected for a presidential election cycle – a phenomenon possibly explained by the increased number of sellers both in and outside of promo.

Steve Grubbs, founder of distributor firm VictoryStore.com (asi/352041), which has long specialized in political signage, thinks there were far more signs sold through Amazon or local pop-up stores than through official campaign sites. Amazon fuels a big portion of Victory Store’s sales, he says. And Amazon sales accounted for approximately 57% of unofficial political merchandise sales for Trump and Harris during peak election season, according to Omnisend.

Still, there’s a certain appeal to buying an “official” sign directly from the campaign, especially for particularly loyal supporters, says Cluverius.

Interesting stuff: ASI Media's Hannah Rosenberger crunched the numbers to come up with this excellent report that looks at presidential candidates' spending on branded #merch.https://t.co/WJiCUX1v93

— Chris Ruvo (@ChrisR_ASI) October 23, 2024

Trump’s and Harris’ official campaigns and associated PACs spent millions of dollars at print and promo firms to stock their merch stores and outfit rallies with a wide variety of branded items. While Trump’s official campaign merch spending (less than $1 million through September) was dramatically lower than his previous campaigns, Biden and Harris had jointly spent nearly $4.9 million through September – much more than the Democratic candidates had in the last several presidential elections. Despite the shifts in spending from previous elections, yard signs were still a core staple of both parties’ merch offerings.

“I don’t think a lot of campaigns expect to win an election based on how much they spent on yard signs,” Cluverius says. “But what they do expect is for yard signs to either fundraise or to motivate volunteers, and that both those things help them advance their campaign mission writ large.”

Battle of Words

Berkovitz calls yard signs “psychological warfare.”

For voters, it’s a way to signal to neighbors who they’re supporting this election – to solidify their neighborhood as a red or blue stronghold among like-minded supporters, or to make sure their individual voice is heard amid a whole lot of noise.

From the campaign side, having yard signs planted in voters’ lawns – especially in areas that heavily lean one way or the other – is a way to indicate political strength in that region. It represents, visually, that there are Trump supporters in that Boston suburb or Harris-Walz enthusiasts in rural Tennessee.

“If you put up a lawn sign, you’re going to vote.” Tobe Berkovitz, Political Media Consultant

Yard signs have long been heavily utilized in local elections to build name recognition for small candidates. It’s a credibility mechanism of sorts, Cluverius says. If a candidate has yard signs all over town or in your favorite neighbors’ front yard, it can be a signal that it’s a solid campaign that has community support.

“Do Kamala Harris or Donald Trump need signs that drive name ID?” asks Grubbs. “Probably not, but they do need signs that show that there’s momentum in their area of people that are supporting them.”

After all, no matter the race, people like to know that they’re on the side of the winners, says David Brown, the president of Campaign Associates, a Florida-based promo distributor that also provides political consulting.

“If one candidate brought more obvious support, as evidenced by signs, flags and bumper stickers, that influences a lot of voters who really aren’t willing to do their own research,” Brown says.

And there’s scientific proof that yard signs do help with vote share. A team of researchers – led by Columbia University Political Science Professor Donald Green – collaborated with multiple campaign committees to test whether lawn signs actually helped to generate votes for the candidates they feature.

The study ultimately determined that political signage has a small but positive impact for advertising candidates. On average, they increase vote share by 1.7 percentage points.

It might not sound like much, but in hyperlocal races or particularly competitive ones, that might be all that separates the winner. One county commissioner’s race in Oregon, for example, was decided by a margin of just 115 votes.

In other words, a yard sign alone isn’t going to be enough to take a candidate from obscurity to prominence, says Green. But recognition of a name from the yard signs outside their kids’ school or the roadside on their route to work could be enough to win a vote from someone who hasn’t researched every race on the ballot.

“The advantage of signage is that the eyes are drawn to it when walking or driving, and there’s no scrolling away from it,” says Green, co-author of Get Out the Vote: How To Increase Voter Turnout. “There’s no blocking it. And for that reason, it’s thought to be a good use of money if what you’re trying to do is get people to take notice of your sign long enough to remember your name.”

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