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A new study from LegalShield which assesses Americans demand for legal services points to a possible Trump victory in November. In August, the firm's consumer stress legal index ticked up slightly to its highest level since November 2020. In presidential battleground states, stress rose even more. And historically, that elevated battleground stress during October and November has resulted in a Republican White House win. To discuss, I'm joined by Matt Layton, LegalShield senior vice president of consumer analytics. Matt, thanks for being here. To start, can you first describe what exactly this legal index tracks? And how is this different from some of the other national polls out there, which do show Kamala Harris leading former President Trump?

Sure, and thank you for having me today. Thank you. You hit it right on. We're seeing two months in a row now of increased consumer financial stress. We had a we had a record increase in July for the 22 years of the index, and August not only maintained that increase, but also had an increase in and of itself. And really, what this says is we serve we provide legal benefits for millions of people all across North America to the tune of 150,000 requests for service per month. And what that allows us to do is we're we we get out ahead of the issue. We can take the pulse of the consumer instead of waiting for more lagging measures, which are uh, polls and surveys.

And what exactly does the stress lie in? What what is making the people that you speak with really on edge?

So, our index is really made up of three different sub-indices, the bankruptcy index, foreclosure index, and a consumer finance index. Each of those three individuals are also increasing over the last several months. But when we speak to our to our lawyers, we hear we hear issues like job security layoffs, folks are concerned that about their about their jobs. They they they don't have enough money at the end of the month to pay their bills. So, you know, what which bill can I pay? Which is okay not to not to pay? And then even on into housing, what happens if I don't make my mortgage payment? What happens if I can't pay my rent? These are the types of issues that we're seeing an increase in that's causing our index to go up.

And why, at least in this index, do we often see higher stress levels equal a Republican win? Is it because there's just more confidence in GOP policies when it comes to economic revivals?

So really, what we're mainly focused on is the data and those correlations. So over the last five presidential elections, what we found is that when the stress level in battleground states rise above the stress level of the national, that has shown the Republican victory in the presidential elections. And conversely, when when the battleground stress levels are below the national level, that has shown a democratic victory again over the last five presidential elections. And what's important about our data in August, and then even continuing on through November, is that in August that battleground stress level rose above the national average for the first time since since February.

And how have you seen the index, and therefore the stress levels change throughout the course of the year? And how do you expect something like the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates to sort of ease some of those fears?

Yeah, so I think that's a really, really good good question. And again, our index measures people's actions today, which gives us a good pulse on how people are feeling right now. While the while the interest rate cut with is, you know, potentially a good thing for everyone, that doesn't really affect pocketbooks today, and our early September data really begins to suggest that because what we're seeing on the early data is that consumer stress is continuing to rise, not only nationally, but that battleground stress is also rising faster than the national average currently.

And we'll have to see what comes up in November. Matt Layton, LegalShield SVP of Consumer Analytics, thanks much for joining us.

Thank you.