Politics and Sports Fans
This chart is certainly interesting:
There are some no-brainers, including most notably the Republican preference for the PGA Tour. Nascar’s position as a heavy Republican/medium turnout sport is also pretty unsurprising. I’m somewhat troubled by the strong Democratic skew of WWE, but not even mildly surprised by the low turnout of wrestling fans. College football and basketball stay Republican by virtue of the higher incomes of college graduates.
Regarding the big sports, I’m a bit surprised by how close football and baseball are to the axis, and also fairly surprised by the NBA’s position as a strong Democratic sport. In the latter case, I’m guessing that the fan base must trend urban and African-American, which would then have to overwhelm the relatively high cost of tickets. Baseball has a much whiter fan base, but much lower ticket prices.
When I think of the common complaints I hear about the NBA, it’s startling just how “conservative” those complaints seem (basically, the things NCAA basketball gets praised for–teamwork, disciple, tradition, hard work–are seen as lacking in the NBA. Oh, and race). It seems a league that conservatives might skew away from.
I’m glad to see the NFL closer to the middle. As a liberal pacifist vegetarian football die-hard (the Vikings torment me), I might be a bit too sensitive about the stereotype of NFL fans as, essentially, the beer commercial representation of men.
i’d guess that what skews the nba democratic is that basketball has a big northeastern cohort (and has for years) and a big LA, big midwestern city base
Isn’t the turnout claimed voting turnout, not live attendance? (Esp. since the guy’s talking about buying airtime for commercials.)
What’s amusing to me is the wide range of difference between the “motorsports,” which are classified very similarly in my brain.
I don’t know about college hoops, but college football is much more likely explained by the fact that it’s highly rural areas that care most about college football. I think this has a lot more to do with a lack of large urban areas to support pro teams than what you say.
Yeah, I thought something similar. College football is big in the South, which is heavily Republican, and the Midwest, which is mixed, while it is almost non-existent in the Northeast, which is one of the Democratic strongholds. This story doesn’t work quite so well for college basketball, which has a bigger following in the NE than football, but I still think Kentucky and Kansas fans are more rabid than, say, Villanova fans.
Plus, especially in the South but also in Big 10 country, I’m not sure how many fans of a particular college team graduated from that college. So I think Rob’s explanation is problematic here.
One of the many reasons that I’m glad I’m a huge OU Sooners football fan is that it gives me something to talk about when I find myself in conversation with people whose political opinions I really don’t want to hear.
I like how MLB is the closest of the major sports to having no skew. Reinforces my belief that baseball is the true thing that binds all Americans together.
Also, I suspect the WWE Democratic skew is a function of age: it is more popular among the young who skew Democratic.
I’m a little surprised/disappointed hockey leans Republican, given its popularity is mostly in the Democratic-leaning Northeast and mixed Midwest. But then I remembered how white the American hockey fanbase usually looks on TV.
Yeah, as someone from Massachusetts, I can tell you that the Venn diagram of Bruins fans and Scott Brown voters is nearly a perfect circle.
As a left-liberal WWE fan, I’m a little confused by the suggestion that WWE fans skew Democratic. I’m basing this on my impression of the crowd I can see on the TV – Al Sharpton got booed when he hosted RAW, and the Slammy Awards were hosted by Dennis Miller, a comedian with whom I was unfamiliar but who turned out to basically be Bill O’Reilly (and I recall his misogynist slurs against Nancy Pelosi getting cheers). Then again, the Slammies were in Texas – I don’t remember where Sharpton’s RAW was held, but I think it was in the South.
I clicked through and they didn’t include any kind of info on gender, but I feel dumb for not immediately thinking of that. I’ll plead living with a woman who I think might snort college basketball through a straw if she could.
Quick googling suggests sports fandom for the major American pro sports leagues are about 60/40 male to female, which is actually higher than I might have suspected.
Sports on TV gives the perception that fandom is entirely the providence of males, since the commercials are all heavily targeted toward men, and most of the people talking about sports on TV are men. But by attending games, by seeing jerseys and t-shirts on campus, it’s clear there’s more gender diversity among fans.
And my wife might have been more upset about the NFC championship game than me.
If I’m reading that chart correctly, WNBA is -100 (Republican minus Democrat). Wouldn’t that imply there are literally no Republicans watching women’s basketball? If it’s true (or close to true) there ought to be some creative marketing opportunities there; e.g., the teams could rename themselves the “The New York Choice” and “The Chicago Union” and “The Philadelphia Atriots,” etc.
I found it interesting that tennis skewed blue. It may be said though that it is the one sport where the women’s game approaches some measure of parity with the men’s game in popularity and earnings.
I took the turnout to mean voter turnout rather than game attendance so I would not think ticket prices has much to do with it.
I think elm probably nailed it on the WWE. For every Texan in attendance at the arena there’s at least one 18-34-year-old Manhattanite for whom it’s a guilty pleasure.
I am also not surprised by the divergence between NFL and college. Can’t say how many times I’ve been told by Republican acquaintances/friends/family that college football is so much more “pure” than professional because the athletes are unpaid. I tend to mentally “Shorter” that in a less than favorable interpretation.
I knew in my bones Grand Am Sportscar Racing was elitist!
I’m surprised road-course racing was mentioned at all. I wonder how Formula 1 or American Le Mans skews?
You have to a liberal to get up at 4am to watch Formula 1 or if you are really liberal you are just getting home!
That depends on your time zone. Most of the European F1 races start at ~8 AM on the East Coast, which is a perfectly reasonable time to be up on a Sunday morning.
West Coast time for me
But my question is: How would a political consultant USE this?
Would they try to motivate all those WWE democrats to vote?
And another thing. All those giant red balls should tell us that a huge majority is voting GOP, but it is not. So maybe the political consultant uses this to find people who are not interested in sports – since they must trend heavily democrat.
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Where’s horse-racing?
The two people I personally know who play the ponies are my mother and my sister, who lean pretty far left.