Polling The Super Bowl

Over the last week, we have started to get the first taste of polls under a Biden Presidency. YouGov and The Economist put out one of their standard book size polling releases. Since the Super Bowl is today, and The Economist poll asked about the Super Bowl I wanted to focus on the demographic divides of who is cheering for the Chiefs vs who is cheering for the Buccaneers. Quinnipiac just released a poll, but I’ll focus mostly on YouGov poll since they gave more demographic info.

First only about 49% are at least a little interested, and 46% are not. The other 5% do not know if they are interested. 19% are very interested, 13% somewhat interested, and 17% a little interested.

Black people are far more interested, with 64% saying they are at least a little interested. 29% say they are not interested.

The demographic that is least interested are White College Graduate Women, who report 56% who are not interested. There is no income divide in interest in the Super Bowl. 18-29 Year Olds in the YouGov pll don’t know if they’re interested at a higher rate than other age groups, but in the QPac poll it was similar rates. The QPac poll has younger people more interested in the Super Bowl.

There is a political divide, with 54% of Trump voters saying they are not interested and only 43% of Biden voters saying they are not. But Moderate voters are the most interested ideology, with 57% interested.

Who People Think Will Win The Super Bowl

I’m going to use only people who answered these questions for the percentages, but about 50% once again said that they didn’t care enough to pick. As a baseline, 60% of people chose the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl.

We had a good amount of variation when split by demographics.

College Degrees Matter when people made their choices

73% of White College-Educated Men said the Chiefs would win, vs just 61% of White Non-College Men choosing the Chiefs. For White Women, a College Education had the opposite effect, with just 51% of College-Educated Women said the Chiefs and Non-College White Women choosing the Chiefs more at 67%.

There was only one subgroup who had a plurality choose the Tampa Bay Buccaneers over the Chiefs, Black People with 51%. Honestly, I didn’t think Brady had appeal with Black People but I’m wrong a lot.

The big split in the YouGov Poll and the QPac poll are age differences in who people are cheering for. In the YouGove Poll, 18-29 Year Olds barely favor the Chiefs, while people 65 and older choose the Chiefs at a 67% to 33% rate, but in the QPac Poll, older people are choosing the Chiefs at just 50% and 18-29 year olds are choosing the Chiefs at 56%.

I think this mostly just illustrates that crosstabs vary way more than topline polls, but they’re fun to look at and give a good broad understanding of Americans. 

Back to the YouGove poll, there is an income difference, people making over 100k think Chiefs will win 67% vs the 56% reported by under $50,000.

Trump voters chose the Chiefs 60% of the time vs 68% chosen by Biden voters.

Conclusion

As stated before, hold the actual numbers with a lot of grains of salt, but I think anybody that reads this understands how polls work for the most part and know that with crosstabs it’s likely within about 5-8% of being right. I might write more about how politics affects how Americans view everything and there’s no escaping it.