Always On: DEI and Brand Tracking

Welcome to Always On. Each week, we’ll dig into a brand or audience trend you need to know about, tapping into Morning Consult Intelligence, our always-on insights platform powered by 15,000 daily surveys across 40+ countries. That means thousands of brands, audience deep dives, and enough fresh data to make your spreadsheets jealous. Sign-up here to get this email sent to you directly every week.

One of the benefits of always on data collection is we can measure how major moments or events are impacting consumer perceptions of brands across the globe. One major news story we’ve been watching: The politicization of corporate DEI efforts.

While many brands have rolled back their DEI efforts under the Trump administration, our always-on brand tracking finds that those that stuck with their initiatives have a positive trajectory with consumers. Check it out below:

Purchasing consideration for DEI stalwart brands is surging among Republicans

Purchasing consideration has surged among Republicans, with large gains from October to November 2024 when President Trump secured reelection. Similar to the brand buzz metric, we can attribute this gain to the strong momentum in consumer confidence lifting brand sentiment across the board among Republicans. With that in mind, it’s fair to say that Republican consumers aren’t paying close attention to brands’ individual DEI policies, not that they’re specifically rewarding these brands for keeping their DEI commitments.

This comes from our new report, The Brand Impact of Sticking with DEI, which explores brands’ reputation and key metrics in the politicization of DEI. We’ll explore this report in today’s edition of Always On.

Going Deeper: Exploring Costco

Our report explores Costco’s reputation, which is extremely stable. They’re known for reliably low prices on good quality products and a strong customer service ethos. When competitors raised prices or cut back on quality and customer experience, Costco chose consistency. And, Costco stood by its DEI commitments when others backed off to avoid drawing the ire of President Trump.

Costco’s defiance hasn’t cost them the president’s base either. Its community impact scores were nearly identical between Democrats and Republicans in June 2025. Costco’s net buzz also shows a nearly identical positive trend in news about the brand reported by both cohorts.

Extra Credit

We’ve been tracking consumers’ perceptions of DEI and corporations’ responses to the political climate around DEI for a while now — check out some of our research from earlier this year below.

• DEI News Has Broken Through to the Public, and Is Impacting Support: Nearly half of those who have heard about DEI pullbacks from stores they patronize said they've either purchased less or stopped purchasing from them, or have told others not to shop there.
• How Americans Feel About Corporate America Abandoning DEI to Appease Trump: For years, large, stable majorities of U.S. adults have said that companies should promote inclusion in the workforce. Majorities also believe that DEI programs are “very” or “somewhat” important to the success of most businesses.
• Global Corporate Purpose Tracker: This tracker follows consumers’ expectations surrounding corporate activism and gauges global trust in business, while diving deeper into the expectations of global consumers around corporate action on key social issues