In case you’ve ever idly wondered whether Republicans or Democrats watch more porn, you’re in luck: We’ve got some answers to that age-old question, thanks to a new study by Pornhub. Even wackier is the fact that we might be able to predict the outcome of the 2016 election with the data they gathered. Here’s what the porn streaming site’s statisticians found when they crunched a few numbers.
First, the methodology: Pornhub started by looking at the viewing habits across all 50 of the U.S.’s states. Then, once they’d figured out the average number of pages viewed per resident of each state, they held it up against the current population and political preferences. It turns out that the average number of pages viewed per visit weren’t that far off from each other, with the figure being 9.33 in Democratic states and 9.22 in Republican ones. It’s once you look at it on a per capita basis that the differences start to emerge: There’s a 13 percent gap, with blue states viewing 137 pages per capita and red ones viewing 121.
Need a visual representation? Here’s how they stack up against each other in the form of two charts. First, Republican states:
<img width="528" alt="red_states_per_capita3" src="http://www.pornhub.com/insights/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/red_states_per_capita3.png" height="710" class="article-body-image" title="Image: http://www.pornhub.com/insights/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/red_states_per_capita3.png"/>
And second, Democratic ones:
<img width="530" alt="blue_states_per_capita3" src="http://www.pornhub.com/insights/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/blue_states_per_capita3.png" height="764" class="article-body-image" title="Image: http://www.pornhub.com/insights/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/blue_states_per_capita3.png"/>
So, of the top 10 states for porn consumption, we’ve got eight blue (Nevada, Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, Hawaii, New York, Virginia, and California) and two red (Kansas and Georgia); the bottom 10 states for amount of porn consumption are the exact opposite, with eight being red (Arkansas, Idaho, West Virginia, South Dakota, Wyoming, South Carolina, Montana, and Utah) and two blue (Maine and New Mexico). According to Pornhub, therefore, this means that by using porn consumption per capita as a predictor of political orientation, they could have predicted the results of the 2012 elections with 70 percent accuracy. They also could have predicted the results in nine of the 12 swing states with 75 percent accuracy. Iiiiiiiiinteresting.
Can this data predict the outcome of the 2016 election? I wouldn’t bet money on it, but then again, I’m not really the gambling type. It’ll be interesting to see how it all shakes out, no?
For a neat-o interactive depicting the porn viewing habits of each state, head on over to Pornhub. Just, y’know… be careful if you’re at work right now. It might be frowned upon in the office, even if it’s just statistics.
Image: donkeyhotey/Flickr
