Brad Miner wrote:
With the Super Bowl coming up this weekend, I [Miner] want to write about sports, which I consider a key to building a larger conservative coalition in America. . . .
If you did a survey of the political philosophies of 75,000 randomly selected Americans you'd expect the usual--if somewhat mystifying--results: "Only about one-in-five Americans currently call themselves liberal (21%), while 38% say they are conservative and 36% describe themselves as moderate." So said the folks at Pew Research, and this was after the November election.
Do that same poll among the fans at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa on Sunday and the results would likely be more like 15% liberal, 30% moderate, and 50% conservative. And a bunch of those liberals would probably be gun owners.
Obviously those numbers are just speculation on my part, but I guarantee that Steelers fans are more conservative than all Pennsylvanians and ditto Cardinals devotees and the rest of Arizona. Which is not to say that these folks cast their ballots in November more for McCain than Obama. That's the problem.
What do the data say?
Yu-Sung and I looked at the "attended sporting event in the past year" item in the General Social Survey. (Unfortunately, the question was only asked once, in the 1993-1996 survey.) 56% of respondents said they attended an amateur or professional sports event" during the past twelve months. How do they differ from the 44% who didn't?
So, at least in the mid-1990s, sports attenders were quite a bit more Republican than other Americans (the categories in the graph above are Strong Democrat, Democrat, lean Democrat, Independent, lean Republican, Republican, strong Republican), but not much different in their liberal-conservative ideology.
So these data do not appear to support Miner's claim. Miner expected sports fans to be label themselves as more conservative but maybe not to be more likely to vote Republican; actually, sports fans were more likely to call themselves Republican but no more likely to describe themselves as conservative.
Some other issues:
1. The sporting event attended could be the Super Bowl or your kid's soccer game. Maybe more dramatic results would be obtained by considering a more restricted group of sports fans.
2. There are lots of surveys of TV watching, so I'm sure there are tons of data that would let you crosstab ideology, voting, and spectator sports watching.
3. More generally, we never want to rely too strongly on just one survey. Still, it's fun to look.
Those of you who see this and think you could do better: You're probably right, and I encourage you to dig up some additional survey data on this topic that connects Nate's two biggest professional interests.
68 comments
Some have argued that sports is the new religion -- it guides the cultural rhetoric and morality.
"I've tried all the major religions, but in the end, I chose the Church of Baseball."
This would be more interesting if you looked at the gender distribution and what the non-sportsfans would look like.
In the 'burgh, we all like the steelers, btw--even the vegans.
--A gun loving lib Stillers fan
Checking into this certainly requires correcting for gender, as men skew more Republican than women, and also make up a larger share of those who attend professional sporting events.
I don't know about Steeler fans, but I can state with some confidence that had the presidential election been held between innings at our beautiful Fenway Park, Barack Obama would have won a MUCH more lopsided victory. Red Sox Nation, at least, is no bastion of conservatism.
This would be a good question for those psychologists studying the differences in how people's brains work across the political spectrum.
This isn't my area of expertise, and I definitely have my own biases coloring my judgment here, but for years I've suspected that conservatives were more likely to act like sports fans when it came to politics. My feeling -- where a centrist or liberal might be more likely to support a position to achieve a certain goal, a conservative would be slightly more likely to support their team's WINNING, WINNING, WINNING for its own sake. And, more likely to take extreme delight in the other team LOSING.
Take a moment to think about recent elections' aftermaths. Remember which people LOVED saying things like "We won, you lost, get over it"...
How about this: if you can afford a ticket to the superbowl, you are probably in the economic class more likely to vote Republican anyway?
I'd say that there are some confounding variables here.
When the owner of the Steelers invoked Obama's name during the post game ceremony after the Super Bowl, there was definitely cheering and I did not hear any booing. However, we all remember Palin dropping the puck at the Flyers game and the reception she got.
I would love to see this broken down by sport, as well. I'm a NASCAR fan. It's definitely viewed as a conservative sport (see: NASCAR Dads), with a strong base among men and blue-collar workers in the South. But over the last decade+, it's gained more fans to the north and west, more high-income fans, and more female fans, all of whom tend to be more liberal politically.
Luxury box holders differ from all season ticket holders differ from average ticket buyers. So if you're forming a judgment about partisan-ideological orientation of sports fans based on who you're sitting next to, then my question is: Where do you sit?
I used to love sitting in a box at Madison Square Garden to see the Rangers and the Knicks. But then my FIL died (and with it my access to the box) and I became just a member of hoi polloi and couldn't afford to go.
This may go down as "interesting, but so what?" or demonstrate some deeper psychopathology in those who worship competition and conflict. I'm not sure which. I do know that NASCAR and horseracing fans are diffrent from soccer parents. Again, so what?
Perhaps we can get a statistical analysis of where on the political bell curve drinkers of foreign beers stand compared to drinkers of Bud. But I don't think that is going to advance our understanding of anything at all.
For this thread to be started when we should still be digesting and discussing Obama and Jindal's speeches last night is as jarring as Fox "News" this morning, which is pretending neither speech occurred.
We need a better posting format here, which does not consign to Elephant Burial Grounds prior discussions, and moves us prairie-dog village like to new discussions which may be of marginal interest.
In other words, this thread is the 538.com equivalent of Jindal's speech last night.
The mainstream media gives sports fans Republican-friendly, Fox News-style coverage every day. Moral outrage, overreactions, oversimplifications -- it's no wonder Rush Limbaugh was able to make the leap from working in sports media. Such a barrage probably has an impact on the views of the target audience, just as Fox News and Limbaugh have an impact. But I don't see any reason that reactionary views on sports should influence political views.
I bet a NASCAR/Basketball fan comparison would be stark.
Back to the speeches last night...
What I thought was genius regarding Obama speech, was the visual "props" if you will.
Often times, stories of American's in speeches are tough to deliver (at least I don't get much out of them)
Sometimes, Obama delivers. When he explained Ann Nixon Coopers life during the election night speech , or the story regarding the city council member in South Carolina in his fired up speech the night before the election where he was able to really tie the experiences and weave them beautifully into the speech.
In last nights address, when Obama spoke of the banking CEO in Florida who gave away his millions or the child in South Carolina, Americans were able to take in that visual of real life stories. The pause and applause and the images this provided, for me at least, were some of the more impressionable moments of the speech and displayed to everyone the decency and determination of our country.
@Liberal - Yes, the stories were poignant.
I ordinarily don't like the Reaganesque flourishes to people in the audience brought in to make a point (just like props, and Palin's son whose name is apparently Prop), but I especially liked the fact that these occurred near the end and that the little girl's "We are not quitters" line reverberated emotionally through the end of the speech. Obama didn't have to repeat that line continuously. By quoting a brave little girl who is trying to advance herself in difficult circumstances (and in one of those "separate but equal" schools I might add), we all knew that he didn't want us to be quitters either. (Michelle hugging the little girl was great. Too bad she displaced the Obama girls, who should have been there, too.)
Together with his 2004 keynote address and hs speech on race, this has to go down as one of Obama's best. And it came at exactly the right time, and to the right audience.
The Republicans who oppose him -- essentially unanimously -- would be wise to heed his popularity and their lack thereof. But, if they are as tone deaf as Bobbie Jindal and his speechwriters, they will self-destruct. I am hoping the Republicans self-destruct without first hindering Obama's policies and programs.
Hi Andrew!
Nice first post, can we get more data? NASCAR dads must be repubs as they are largely white southern thugs, but maybe this does not follow in other sports?
liberal_defender_of_freedom: Heck, fans of two different basketball teams can have significant political differences: http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2007/12/acc-loyalty-poll-political-breakdown.html
(And if that seems a lot more Democratic than North Carolina normally is, notice the poll was conducted only in the Triangle, which is more liberal than the state as a whole.)
Oh, and by the way: Go Heels!
@Brad - This was not Andrew's first post. It's amazing to see the sports fans coming out. I can see the problem. Short attention span.
This thread should be sunk and we should go back to discussing politics here.
I don't have survey data to cite, but as a lifelong die-hard fan of several major college and professional sports, my lifelong observation is that you DO find partisan skews in some sports, but the sports fanship has nothing to do with it.
I'm an Iowa State alumnus and fan, and I can tell you the fans on our main message boards that I frequent skew much more conservative than the electorate at large. I know from shared discussions with others that the same is true of fans of other teams or NFL teams. That has nothing to do with football and everything to do with coincidental correlation. Football fans are much more male than the electorate at large, and those who buy tickets to attend football games in person (especially NFL games which are expensive) are more affluent than the electorate at large. And in America "more affluent" translates to whiter.
So football fans include a lot more white men than the national electorate. Geez, you don't think they'd be more Republican, do you?
All of this is to say Republicans gain nothing by focusing on voters' passtimes and hobbies as partisan or ideological recruiting tools. Perhaps it's another avenue of microtargeting, but if so I guarantee it's already being used as such by the political parties.
Thus, there is nothing new or insightful in the qutoed wingnut's notion of a sports-politics axis.
STepper:
i might have liked to make fun of the pathetic jindal last night too, but it is really just too easy to make fun of the exorcist!
and as to sports not being discussed here i hang out alot on a tennis site and the Israeli players being denied in Dubai has been a hot topic. as i repeatedly kept bringing up there, politics is in EVERY part of our lives-including the arts and sports. it always has been. therefore, Sports is a legitimate topic here.
@STepper: I agree 538 needs a new format, one that recognizes not only different topic areas but different writers-contributors.
If things were organized under different "feature" headings, then what is now a single feature listing could multiply accordingly.
I would also like to see a different way of presenting authorship, with the author of a column clearly listed at the top of the article (with name in full, not just first name).
Perhaps now that Nate is thoroughly out of election/post-election cycle, and done with the largest part of his baseball forecast work, he can focus on how to reorganize this site. It really is too bad when articles that are just a day or two old scroll out of memory and are liable to be missed entirely by readers who may have skipped visiting 538 for a couple of days.
btw-the tennis fans kept saying politics should be kept out of sports. this is a false notion-sports and politics have been hanging out together forever!
any one remember all the flag waving at the utah olympics complete with tanks???
IDK. Demographic investigations into voting patterns seems fairly relevant. I remember people intrigued with the Starbucks to Walmart ratios during the primaries. I just think this one by not coming out with some show stopper results causes the lackluster response.
@livemild:
At the tennis site, do they ever rail against 'foreigners' playing NCAA tennis?
Jayant, you've broken the group "sports fans" into the subgroup of "sports fans who post on message boards." I post on a couple, and I would agree that group is a lot more conservative than the mainstream as a whole. As an aside, I'm in Little Rock, and a few months ago we had a guy who started a radio sports talk show and made an issue of the fact that he would be promoting the military and law enforcement and if you didn't like it, don't listen. He didn't last long, but it sounds like he was making the presumption people who listen to sports talk shows also skew to the right.
Nate -
Thank you for an excellent post.
I don't agree that this is not relevant.
A major, if not THE major, Republican strategy, is to try to make men vote against their own self-interest by implying Republicans are the party of courage, competition, and manliness in general, and to try to make men who don't vote Republican feel excluded from such things.
Some posters here may feel that it is foolish for men to care about such things, but it is a fact that many men do. And in all societies, not just in the US.
It is not "manly" or "macho" to promote bad economic policy and useless wars, nor to wish to remove all safety nets for vulnerable people.
There is often a confusion in the US, between people who advocate personal choice decisions, and people who advocate enforced public policy decisions.
I think we need to work against the right wing tendency to conflate personal choices with public policy that is unrelated to those choices.
Again, it does not make you more of a macho sports guy to vote for bad economic policy and useless wars. Nor does it make you more of a latte-sipping metrosexual to vote against them.
It's time to point out that this stuff is irrelevant.
@ liberal_defender_of_freedom
I liked your reference to the Starbucks/Walmart ratio. I remember that many people from Washington State and Oregon mentioned some of the issues with that formula. Basically, it does not account for other coffee houses per capita, which are pretty good indicators of more liberal politics.
Here are the problems with using the simple survey listed:
1) Are Red Sox fans more/less liberal than Yankees fans? Are Steeler fans more/less conservatire than Cowboy fans? Comparing cities/states/regions.
2) Are people that GO to professional sports more/less conservative than people that watch on television or watch in a bar with friends? Comparing income/wealth.
3) What is the breakdown between professional/minor league/college/high school/other? Comparing age/sex.
4) Are hockey fans more/less liberal than football fans? Comparing regional differences.
5) Of those that attend in person, is the seat a one-off purchase, a season-ticket or a luxury box? Comparing income/wealth.
6) Is there a measurable relationship between sports affliation itself (as opposed to indirect measures such as geography/income/age/sex) and politics?
As opposed to religion, which seems to have a fairly strong relationship between groups, I would posit that any single sports affliation, or even grouping of them, has a very loose coefficient.
The people I watch sports with at a bar have very different politics as a group. Some are more liberal than I, which makes them nearly communists :) while others are very conservative. However, we leave our politics at the door and the success or failures of our teams mean little to how we would vote.
The owners of the Red Sox offered John Kerry use of the plane on election night, a week after winning the World Series. Curt Shilling, uber-Republican, was a star on that team. And you know what? All the fans wanted both sides to shut the hell up and talk about baseball.
I bet NASCAR fans are predominently conservatives, what with them seemingly intellectually stimulated by watching bright, shiny cars drive in the same circles for hour on end.
In Zogby Interactive polls, one of their standard question is "Are you a NASCAR fan?" They use it as some kind of "cultural" marker.
Another of their standard question is, "Are you a member of the investor class?" Again a marker. Supplemented by a more concrete one about whether we own stocks and bonds, perhaps in a pension fund. They only added that follow-up question more recently.
How predictive of political behavior or political attitudes these markers are is a mystery to me.
What it boils down to is liberals are very different people than conservatives. They have different hobbies and interests.
Football fans in general are more likely to be republicans...i could have easily told you that much nate! Hell even most hardcore patriots fans are likely conservatives even though ALL of new england is solid blue.
In general conservatives are more into sports than liberals.
Im not bashing football fans here but watching big guys ram into each other over a pig's skin just SOUNDS like something a neo-con would like. And yeah...i know im gonna get flammed for saying that.
Bottom line here is liberals and conservatives have different interests.
things that conservatives are more likely to do than liberals that DONT directly have to do with politics:
- Watch football
- Watch NASCAR
- Watch Jerry Springer (but not knowing that Jerry Springer was actually a democratic mayor)
- go hunting
- go fishing
- shop at walmart
- go to church regularly
- get drunk more often than twice a month
- use america online as thier isp (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/terry-trippany/2008/09/27/aol-straw-poll-mccain-63-obama-37)
- listen to country music
-------------------------------
things that liberals are more likely to do than conservatives that DONT directly have to do with politics:
- own a cat
- listen to rap music or alternative rock
- play video games often
- watch anime
- mock religion
- go to starbucks
- attend a sci-fi/star trek/anime/comic book convention...or rather just be a nerd in general (not making fun...im a nerd myself)
- be metrosexual
- read/watch science fiction
Now i know it sounds like im saying that all conservatives are dumb beer drinking rednecks and all liberals are nerdy elitists...but thats not what im saying. My only point is that these are things that they are more likely to be.
Im a nerd with a technology obsession and an atheist who mocks religion and it should be no surprise im a liberal democrat.
Also every NASCAR fan i have ever known has been a white male christan REPUBLICAN.
Also ever notice that most conspiracy theorists....especially 9/11 troofers are paulbot neolibertarians?
Whats my point? most stereotypes about both conservatives and liberals hold at least some truth to them
What is a metrosexual?
Andrew, put your last name in your sig at the bottom of your posts.
@brad: A metrosexual is a guy who is completely heterosexual but acts in a way that suggests many homosexual stereotypes. Like....a metrosexual gets their hair done more often, archs their eyebrows, wears makeup, and is overall much more fashionable than a typical male. Most of these guys tend to be liberals.
This is kind of a silly topic. If you were to poll a group of attenders to bath houses in San Francisco, they would be overwhelmly librul. In addition, parents that insist on signing up their kids for soccer as opposed to American sports will be librul. There are librul(mainline) churches as well.
@Jack-be-nimble: First off most soccer moms are republicans....they were the ones who went overwhelmingly for george w bush in 2004 by reacting to george bush's fear mongering.
Secondly yeah theres a few churches where the main population is liberal....but that still does not change the fact that overall people with strong religious beliefs are more likely to be conservatives and atheists are MUCH more likely to be liberals.
And this isnt a silly topic at all, one of the main themes of fivethirtyeight is partisanship in general....and its an interesting topic to discuss things that liberals and conservatives like that have almost nothing to do with politics.
Interesting post, but I think some of you are jumping the gun thinking about the psychology of sports fans.
First remember this is about who goes to the games, which is also affected by how often someone goes to a game. Liberals attract more lower class and middle lower class voters than Republicans. I would control for other variables that influence someone going to the game (or frequently attending a game).
Those -might- be the real variables that influence political identification instead of sports.
Dear Brad Miner (who is more likely to see this comment here than on a month-only blog post),
Your essay chiding conservatives for their lack of understanding of sports is weakened by your own lack of understanding of sports. Two errors jumped out at me, one minor, one major (there certainly may be more). FOX didn't broadcast the Super Bowl this year; NBC did. More to the point, the control group for Steelers fans is not "Pennsylvanians"; it's "Americans", or perhaps "Americans whose parents were Pennsylvanians". You greatly misunderstand Steelers Nation.
My guess is that if you were to somehow remove the labels, you would find that most people fall in the moderate to liberal category, even at sports events. I'm sure sports fans, who are generally more competitive, would be hesitant to associate themselves with liberalism, which has been stigmatized as wimpy, cowardly, anti-American, while conservatism, despite the beating it's taken under GWB, is still considered manly and courageous, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Ed in NJ is obviously a homo.
e3323:
http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/carlin.html
Wow e3323, way to present your stereotypes as "fact." Any evidence at all about any of those presumed statements (other than the AOL thing)?
Some of your guesses seem more reasonable than others (NASCAR, country music, chruch), but some seem to be pulled out of thin air and simply reflect your biases about Republicans (football, getting drunk, etc).
Personally, I would expect football to be pretty balanced when compared to men in general. I've got season tickets, and most of the guys in my section are are union guys and/or African-Americans (both lean pretty heavily Democratic). Since men are more likely to be Republican than women, and since men make up the majority of football fans, I'd expect football fans to be more Republican than the country at large.
In fact, for most of these things, I'd expect the difference to be almost entirely explained by other factors. For instance, I suspect that Democrats do probably play more video games than Republicans because Democrats are (on average) younger than Republicans.
This can be an interesting discussion, but it shouldn't be used to just reinforce dumb stereotypes (e.g. Republicans are dumb hicks and are therefore more likely to do redneck stuff). That doesn't help anybody understand anything, it just reinforces those silly divisions that Obama's always talking about.
As I recall (vaguely), Karl Rove looked at this for the 2004 election in connection with his "microtargeting" initiative, and he came up with signficant differences depending on which sports the voters were fans of - college football was watched by Republicans, NBA basketball by Democrats, for example.
The original comment from Miner is predicated on the false conceit that "liberals" are effete, non-confrontational types and "conservatives" are red-meat eating near troglodytes. This goes back to same demonization of the term "liberal" that the GOP has engaged in since Reagan, but it just doesn't hold.
For example, unions are solidly considered in the heart of the "liberal" wing of the Democratic party. Guess what? That's who the Steelers are named after (y'now, the Steel-workers - their three-diamon logo is even linked to the industry). Ditto the Packers (named after the meat packers union and owned by the city) and Eagles (named for the symbol of the original NRA in the Great Depression). Shockingly enough (or not for anyone who has ever been to an NFL game), there are a ton of blue collar, union households that vote Dem, supported Obama and love both Bud and the NFL. There are also plenty of white collar, non-union households that vote Dem, supported Obama and tailgate with microbrews and chardonnay.
Yes, sports emphasize victory. They also emphasize organization, teamwork and discipline. They foster camraderie and a sense of mutual obligation and respect. Those aren't uniquely Republican or conservative traits. JFK, Obama, even Clinton all showed Dems can be avid sports fans comfortable with that environment (Carter and LBJ a less so). We like football in Berkeley too - as long as the team doesn't suck (as it has for 40 of the last 50 years, although we've been on a nice run for a while now). And we'll drink cheap beer with our burgers if that's all we can afford.
And on the NASCAR thing - its audience has become less Southern Wal-Martian in the last decade or so. Has to do with things like the death spiral of the IRL/Champ, the emergence of non Southern racing teams (yes, they are called teams) and polished TV friendly types (Jeff Gordon, Jimmy Johnson, etc.) and the expansion to western venues (Fontana, Las Vegas, Sonoma, etc.) But it is rooted deep in the social and party culture of the South so the most public face of it remains pretty redneck.
It depends what sports do you watch.
Generally, NASCAR fans are conservative, NBA fans are liberal.
But not all NASCAR fans are conservative and not all NBA fans are liberal.
Own a cat is liberal?.
A lot of conservatives have cats.
Wait you lost me after the first sentence...
@ Berkeley Bear: We like football in Berkeley too . . and we'll drink cheap beer with our burgers if that's all we can afford.
Thank you. I was about to launch a tirade about all the football-loving, beer-drinking, working class commie liberals I grew up with in the Bay Area, but as always, you said it much, much better.
Hey, chill with the NASCAR hating. I'm a liberal dem from NY and I love NASCAR. Granted, I'm the only person I know in my position...
But, that being said, having been to races I can tell you that the vast majority of race-goers are conservative hicks. But I have had the pleasure of seeing one black person and one Middle Easterner at the Pocono race one time, which mine eyes beheld with such a shock as might make one's hair stand on end. Or something...
STepper said...
Together with his 2004 keynote address and hs speech on race, this has to go down as one of Obama's best. And it came at exactly the right time, and to the right audience.
The Republicans who oppose him -- essentially unanimously -- would be wise to heed his popularity and their lack thereof. But, if they are as tone deaf as Bobbie Jindal and his speechwriters, they will self-destruct. I am hoping the Republicans self-destruct without first hindering Obama's policies and programs.
My favourite Obama speeches:
1. 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address 5/5
2. New Hampshire Primary Concession Speech 5/5
3. Last night's address to congress.
4. Speech on Race 5/5
5. 2008 Democratic Convention Acceptance Speech 4/5
6. Iowa Victory Speech 4/5
7. Presidential Election Victory Speech 4/5
Republicans now have no choice but to oppose the president. They've blatantly defined themselves early in the Obama Presidency as the "Party of No". It would have been wise to lay low for the first 100 days, quietly redefine the party on 21st century issues, then wait for an opportunity to pounce. Instead, they picked a lying, trash-talking prick as party chairman and allowed the new face of the party (apart from Limbaugh) to be humiliated on live television. If SNL cannot produce a funny skit from last night's performance from Bobby Jihad, they should seriously consider hanging their shit up.
Presumably, the Republican establishment think the Whore from Wasilla is electoral poison, and that's why attempted to lay down the gauntlet last night. If that was the plan, it failed miserably. They're now stuck with Mooseburger and her considerable baggage (Witch Doctors, Succession Groups, Troopergate, Banning Books, Animal Cruelty, etc.) for 2012. If the Republicans play their cards right, they may hold onto the fundie vote.
BTW, I agree about the Obama girls, they should have been there. But this wasn't historical significant like a first State of the Union. If you think about it, this was a write-off. And yet, what has resulted from this address is an increase of 15-20% from mainstreet support for his domestic agenda, and one of his rivals has been taken out. Apparently Bobby Jihad was a bit snippy this morning responding to Biden.
Rufus,
I guess I should have (in the interest of full disclosure) also said most of the folks I know from Cal would rather drink a Sierra Nevada to wash down a slice of Zach's (esp. the spinach and chicken), but that's just because it's a clearly superior combination.
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090225/NEWS02/902250416
Interesting article on why even a Dem governor is thinking about rejecting the stimulus funds for unemployemnt relief.
That whole "stim-u-less" bill is a fairy tale. It is nothing more than disguised social policy that will do little to improve the economy.
Even the most basic income transfer elements of the bill have been runied.
@DarÃo: Yes i would bet my life that over 50 percent of cat owners who voted in the 2008 election voted for Barack Obama. I'll explain why. First off Cat ownership is extremely popular with women...especially single women...an extremely democratic demographic. Second animal lovers in general tend to be more liberal.
You know conservatives who own cats? OK....that doesnt prove me wrong when i say its something a liberal is more likely to do than a conservative.
Picking an exception to the rule does not disprove it. Suppose i said african americans are solidly democratic. If someone said "well i know a few black conservatives also look at steele" it wouldnt prove me wrong because I didnt say ALL african americans are democrats....just most.
Why is it when people say "are more likely to ______" or "most _____" they hear "ALL ______"?
Like... im a white male and im a democrat...but i wont argue with anyone who says the majority of white males vote republican....because its true.
TLDR: learn the difference between "most/the majority of" and "all". Thank you.
@ Berkeley Bear: but that's just because it's a clearly superior combination.
So true. But my Raider Fan family and friends - all of whom voted for Obama - would disagree, preferring brats and a cold Miller on game day :)
I would be quite surprised if sports fans did not skew conservative. Leaving aside any cultural considerations (which would in all likelihood enhance the effect) attendees at sports events skew strongly male and even more strongly white. That fact alone would indicate a more conservative bend to sports event attendees.
in response to:
Republicans now have no choice but to oppose the president...
...Apparently Bobby Jihad was a bit snippy this morning responding to Biden.
Does anybody really take anything PorridgeGun says seriously except the other ultra-ultra-ultra liberal far left mongoloids who troll this site (which unfortunately is a solid plurality)?
While I'm at it, kudos to the brave and sensible moderate liberals and Democrats, centrists/independents, and few insightful conservatives that add colorful commentary to this site.
Anyway, I'm convinced Obama could hold a press conference tomorrow morning, reveal he is a fire-breathing incubus who, besides serving his primary role of engaging in surreptitious intercourse with unwilling and unsuspecting females, is also on a quest to destroy the souls of all of the children on the planet, and the next post on fivethirtyeight.com there'd be a comment from PorridgeGun along the lines of:
Those fuckstick dumbarse Republican clowns are obstructing the wonderful Obama and his magnificent plans. Damn those assholes. Obama may be a demon from hell out to rape or destroy half the planet, but he's the only leader who can pull us out of this mess Shrub and Dickwad left us in...hopefully he'll fuck Mooseburger in the arse and shut her fundie dumbarse up for the next century and the Republithugs' souls will rot in hell along with those children that Obama is out to destroy to fulfill his demonic quest. Guess it's just collater fucking damage, but oh well...
Does that about cover it? God, you make me sick. Reading your drivel is the equivalent of hearing a nail go down a chalkboard. Do us all a favor and jump off a cliff. And to any of you who take him seriously or agree with his vile hatred, you can do the same.
It might be ionteresting to consider the political leanings of different sports crowds. For instance I could imagine a baseball crowd being majority moderate GOP types (maybe the Obamacan type?) at least in some parts of the country, though in others it might be a more hardcore Democratic base, and in others a more hardcore GOP type.
Other than perhaps the Utah Jazz, I have always imagines basketball fans to be Democrat, Football fans seem more likely to be Republican, but again is that just a geographical thing? Maybe in the more blue collar areas (Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo etc) you might get a more Democratic demographic?
I have always imagined most PGA golfers to be Republican, NASCAR is always supposed to be a largely GOP demographic. I dunno about hockey though? Seems to do best in blue collar areas so maybe its a Democratic crowd?
Truth is I think that all sports probably have something of a diverse mix, and Miner's articles seems a bit boneheaded to me.
On a slightly different note, I suggest that the problem of underregulation in the economic sphere is analogous to having a sport that is either poorly refereed or needs some new rules. Sports fans have a sense of fairness, and Obama needs to appeal to it. The Bush admin's hallmark was a blatantly unfair tilting of the playing field towards the very wealthy.
Sports events are very expensive. All this shows is that the corporate people who buy up tickets are wealthy REPUBLICANS but not necessarily sports fans (the event is just a place to be seen). The real fans are often at home watching on TV. If you polled the fans in the student section at most schools OBAMA and the DEMS wins by a landslide.
NASCAR is communist. They only turn left.
Have conservatives grasped the socialism rampant in professional sports leagues?
The draft, luxury tax (!), salary caps, etc.
Read your Hunter S. Thompson, people. Politics is bloodsport.
I only had time to skim the sixty or so comments above mine, so forgive me if this point has been made.
But Miner's sample is substantially more likely than the population at large to be:
a) Male;
b) Wealthy enough to buy NFL tickets; and
c) Southern.
And he wonders at the disproportionate number of self-identified conservatives?
(What makes it particularly curious is that in Miner's post, linked by Andrew, Miner makes precisely the same point with respect to student athletes at Yale. Somehow it escaped him that it could apply to his own figures.)
One thing that may mess up the correlation: ask Steelers fans what they thought of Kordell Stewart and Bubby Brister during the "valley of death" years. You think progressives hate Lieberman?
wow. Here I am in liberal Vermont/North Red Sox Nation. Haven't attended a sporting event for a couple of years, but haven't missed a Red Sox game on the teevee for at least a decade (first spring training game last night). I've got lots of liberal company in the Nation.
The 2008 GSS will repeat this question. It should be released any time now (I think there was a delay because they've switched over to a panel format.) Anyway, it would be interesting to see how much this distribution has changed over the last decade.
Of course we need to control for race, geography, etc., but interesting to mull on what causal, rather than correlative, links are to be found here. Watching sports (depends which) involves cheering for and watching success for minority and foreign-born athletes. Might that improve tolerance? Do people who are naturally more tolerant gravitate to sports with more diversity?
At this point, the republicans have almost no rational, fact-based arguments working in their favor. Voting republican is a thoughtless act of blind faith, sort of like rooting for the home team. Its Us vs Them.
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