Relationship between NCAA Division I Football Support and Politics

The table above shows the relationship between a state's NCAA division I football attendance and which presidential candidate it supported in the 2008 election. Red states are those that supported the Republican candidate, blue states supported the Democratic candidate. Lighter blue states were "swing states" -- states that where the vote was close, but went for the Democratic candidate.

The attendance figure was calculated by dividing the total Division I football attendance for 2008 by the state's total population.

As the graph shows, there is a correlation between high attendance states, and support for the Republicans in the election.

It would seem likely that stronger conservative feelings of loyalty and authority contribute to support.

Abortion attitudes -- a barometer of conservative anxiety?

Recent polling has shown a dramatic increase then number of people saying they are against abortion. The increase has been most dramatic amongst whites -- particularly conservatives. Attitudes towards abortion haven't changed substantially amongst Democrats and Blacks.

This recent increase occurred after the election of Obama in November 2008; a similar spike in anti-abortion feelings occurred in 2001.

Could heightened stress from inter-group conflict -- terrorist attacks from Middle East, minorities being elected to the head of our government -- find its expression in greater angst about abortion? Abortion is an easy issue to declare your opposition to -- even those who agree with its need conceptually don't promote the behavior actively.

Its easy to have strong emotions about the killing of babies -- feelings that may not be dissimilar in strength to fears of other groups of people in threatening positions. Perhaps these inter-group fears are displaced and publicly presented in anti-abortion rhetoric.


read PEW Research poll here

read Gallup poll here

Conservatism and Early Adopters

The chart above is from the paper "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition", by Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski and Sulloway.

Link to paper here

The paper summarizes several studies linking the psychological traits of individuals to their political views, focusing on which traits are positively and correlated with conservatism.

As the diagram above illustrates, fear & uncertainty are underlying contributors for the expression for political conservatism.

From a marketing standpoint, this presents an interesting challenge: if political conservatism is positively correlated to wealth and disposable income, how do get these consumers -- the ones who can afford to take risks -- to try new and innovative products (as innovation has been negatively correlated to conservatism in some studies)?

For this group, should innovative products be positioned as extensions of existing products -- downplaying their innovative features -- and emphasizing their performance attributed vis-a-vis peers? This would shift the consumer's mindset from a sense of risk of experimenting with unproven technology, to a fear that a competitor would be gaining an advantage.

Building further on this notion, it would seem that products that mitigated fears and anxiety of unseen contagions -- disease and crime -- would also be well positioned for the politically conservative segment, and a means for innovative ideas to gain access to the financial power of these consumers.