You Give Gift Cards? Here’s How You Probably Vote

By Eric Chemi, CNBC

This Christmas, are you going to give up on trying to think of a creative gift? Are you the type who will buy a gift card instead? You aren’t alone. In fact, you might fit the stereotype for the rest of your kind: America’s gift card givers.

According to data provided to CNBC by Resonate, a brand and marketing analytics firm, older females tend to disproportionately buy gift certificates. Resonate projects that 1.3 million Americans will buy gift cards this season—and many will buy more than one.

That slice of the population is different from the rest of us. The basics like age and sex may not be surprisng: 23 percent are aged 55-64, and another 23 percent are 65 or older. That 46 percent total far outweighs the 29 percent of the total adult online population in that same age group. Women in the segment outnumber men by 60 to 40.

But we can dig even deeper on who these people are, where they shop, how they vote and what they think.

For example, gift card givers are more likely to vote Republican by a 9 percentage point gap—37 percent for the gift card buyers compared with the national average of 28 percent. (The percentages take into account people who do not vote at all.)

It’s not that simple, though, because they’re also a more socially liberal type of conservative. Sixty percent of them support gay marriage, for example.

Their biggest concern was the brand—which influenced 43 percent of them. Their next biggest concern, affecting 40 percent of them, is price. They shop at a variety of stores. Below is a chart showing how many gift card givers have shopped at one of these retailers in the past month. It might give you a guide for where your gift card is coming from this season:

Maybe there is a reason they didn’t have time to shop for a creative present: They spend all their day clipping coupons. The gift card givers are 40 percent more likely to use coupons than the rest of the country.

Or perhaps they have a better excuse—they could have been too busy spending time with their loved ones: Eighty-two percent say family time is the best part of their day.