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Alcohol sales soared 68% on Election Day, with Democratic states buying the most: Drizly

Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley discusses the boom in alcohol sales during election day

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well, let's talk about drinking with Drizly. What did you want to tell us about millennials and their habits to get-- to imbibe?

DAN HOWLEY: All right, let me put these things down. So it turns out that during election night, people were really, really boozing. And I mean a lot. 68%, that's what Drizly says they saw as a jump over the four previous Tuesdays, as far as their sales. Drizly you all remember as the boozy app that allows you to order drinks, beer, liquor, from any kind of local liquor store that's available.

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I use it regularly. But they don't know that. And so they saw that 68% jump over the four previous Tuesdays. The big changes that they saw were in some of the major cities. For instance, Washington DC saw 133% jump over the four previous Tuesdays. New York City, 110%, Chicago, 55%, and LA, 34%.

And I got to point out the statistics for some of the sites, the areas in the country. So areas that were heavily Republican, they only saw a 33% jump in liquor sales, whereas Democratic cities saw a 75% jump. So you can take with that-- from that what you will. It's still a very interesting statistic.

And as you point out, Adam, those drinking the most, a 69% increase-- I'm sorry, a 55% increase for people in the millennial age group. So everyone was basically drinking on election night. I'm surprised that they're sober at this point, though.

SEANA SMITH: Dan, what about the swing states? Because I think you can make the argument that maybe they've been under the most amount of stress here, trying to watch what their state is going, if they're going to be for Biden or be for President Trump. And also, is there any difference just in terms of what people are ordering?

DAN HOWLEY: There actually was. And so for the swing states, Drizly really had that as well, they saw a 54.84% increase in liquor sales in those areas. And those included the likes of Texas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia was in there, Pennsylvania, Arizona. So really kind of covering the whole gamut there.

And as far as what people were drinking, beer sales were up 13.9%, liquor sales were up 38%, and wine sales, for the classy election drinker, those were up 50%-- 45%, excuse me. And so that was in blue states. Red states, it kind of led the same, switch liquor and wine. But it seemed like everybody just needed to drink to try to calm down.

Again, they might still want to keep doing that into the weekend.

ADAM SHAPIRO: And with, what, five states passing legal weed, recreational stuff, for the next election cycle, there may be a business opportunity for someone who wants to take the Drizly model and turn it into maybe the Spicoli model. We'll talk about that another time. Dan Howley, thank you very much.