Where Did All the Yard Signs Go?

I generally like to avoid using personal anecdotes to illustrate a point. It’s bad practice that results in skewed evidence. That all being said and acknowledged, the internet has turned up no results confirming or denying (or acknowledging) the observation I wish to make, so here it is.

A few weeks ago, I took a trip into the rural Ohio countryside. Those of us who live in the western half of the state like to tell people that Ohio is boring, flat, and uninteresting, which is really only true if you’re driving straight up I-75. I didn’t do that, though. I took state routes over gentle hills, around corn and soy fields, and through small towns and neighborhoods. (READ MORE: On Harris’s Bus…And Under It)

I was about an hour into my trip, singing along to Arcadian Wild at the top of my lungs, when I passed a large sign in someone’s yard advertising the Harris–Walz ticket. The sign itself wasn’t odd — after all, it is a presidential election year — but what was strange was that it was alone.

A few years ago, Washington Examiner journalist Salena Zito spoke to a gaggle of students at Hillsdale College. I believe she had just finished reporting on the 2020 election and was still riding on her laurels as one of the few political commentators who had correctly predicted the results of the 2016 election.

Zito is the kind of woman who never takes the interstate and stops at local bars and diners rather than McDonalds when she goes on road trips. It’s not exactly the most convenient way to travel, but it is the most informative. Back in 2016, Zito predicted that Trump would win because, when she talked to Americans at mom-and-pop diners, they said they would vote for him, and when she drove around Pennsylvania, she saw Trump–Pence signs everywhere.

In 2020, Zito told us, things changed. The yard signs never went up, and Americans became tight-lipped about their political beliefs. That, of course, was in the midst of the pandemic and the George Floyd riots. American politics were so heated, and the consequences of speaking out were so potentially damaging, that most Americans never took the risk. (READ MORE: How Trump Can Win (Or Lose))

But what about now? The pandemic is over, and this year’s riots are tame compared to 2020’s. But the yard signs haven’t come back.

Way back in 2012, the Atlantic complained that yard signs were both ubiquitous and totally useless as a means of persuasion. More recently (in 2015), the Washington Post agreed, describing them as “similar to randomly handing out fliers at a grocery store: a waste of time, money and energy.” Perhaps Americans, after decades of lawn warfare, have gotten the hint, accepted the inevitable, and have retired their hideous plastic political yard signs. I find that theory unlikely.

The two other explanations I’m able to concoct are a bit less optimistic.

One explanation is that Americans still feel stifled politically. There is a growing gap between the beliefs of the average voter — e.g. sex is biological (60 percent), we shouldn’t be teaching gender ideology in schools (70 percent), and illegal immigrants should be deported (51 percent) — and the policies and political culture being pushed on Americans by Hollywood and liberal politicians.

Normal people feel that they are in the minority, even though they are in the majority, and that could easily mean that they won’t choose to express themselves as loudly and proudly as they have in the past.

Another explanation could be that Americans are less motivated and interested in politics than they have been in the past. It could be that, after four years of hyper-politicization, we’re all just done with politics. We’ve thrown up our hands in disgust and decided to better our yards with flowers rather than political signs. There’s some data to back that idea up as well.

From the perspective of media companies, the average American’s disinterest in politics has meant fewer eyeballs on TV screens and webpages. Back in February, Axios noted that fewer Americans were reading the news when compared with numbers from the last presidential election. There likely has been an uptick since, although it’s still too early to get data on that.

Looking at the bigger picture, major newsrooms were counting on the 2024 election cycle to stem the hemorrhage of jobs and profits they’ve experienced in the last couple of years. Even if the 2024 election cycle steps in to save media companies for another year, it’s a temporary and not a permanent fix. (READ MORE: A Political and Ideological Scoreboard of the Right to Separate the Sheep from the Goats)

The fact is, political yardsigns weren’t a way to poll the nation to see which political candidate was more likely to win. They weren’t ever going to convince your diehard CNN-junkie neighbor to vote for Donald Trump. (They were intended to drive him nuts.) But they were a good way to get a feel for how excited and interested people were in the election. Now they seem to be gone.

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