Your ideology, party ID, your first name & where YOU live

Posted on by

partyI found this fun little tidbit while prowling cyberspace.  Clarity Campaign Labs,a Democrat consulting firm, has put together some neat little apps that MAY offer a hint as to a voter’s political leanings — based on their first name and where they live.

Here’s one about individual first names.  You enter your first name on the linked page, press the button, and the app offers up some hints about your possible political leanings.  For instance, let’s look at my first name.  Fifty-eight percent of people with my first name are red-state / Republican types.   A total of 58 percent of people with my name have a college degree, while 48 percent are likely to have a gun in the house.  A total of 57 percent of people with my name attend church services weekly.

Let’s look at folks named Thom.  Roughly 55 percent of those guys have a college degree.  Roughly 46 percent have a gun in the house and / or attend church services weekly. Let’s look at women named Kay. Roughly 50 percent have a college degree, while roughly 44 percent attend church services weekly.  Roughly 58 percent of Kays have a gun in the house.

Clarity also has an app that runs statistical analyses based on zip code.    Enter your home state, answer a few short questions, and it offers up the top five locations in that state where you would be the most ideologically compatible.  Bakersville, North Carolina — in western NC — is the place where I, apparently, would be the most at-home politically.

Clarity has used the data from these analyses to ID the most liberal and most conservative communities in each of our 50 states.  In North Carolina, the western town of Bakersville is the most conservative while Greensboro is IDed as the most liberal.  In South Carolina, the coastal town of Pinopolis is IDed as the most conservative, while the town of Gifford, on the border with Georgia, is IDed as the most liberal.

Exercises like this are pretty useful in endeavors like targeted marketing of products and political candidates.