Because whirled peas have less complexity (in Gell-Man’s sense of the term).
I originally wanted to make a post giving the Tea Party data Tom Schaller didn’t. But then I found that lack (but not his overinterpretation) must be blamed on the source, so the missing data will stay missed. Fortunately, Steve Sailer referenced a press release containing voting frequency and partisan preference for sports & general television watchers. He only presented the one for sports, so I present the general television one below. I hope I didn’t screw it up too much in MS Paint.
Wordpress only lets me make the image so large when viewed from the post (at 175% it disappears), so you’ll have to click on it in order to read the (blurry) text in the even more scaled-up version.
UPDATE: Sailer is now showing a sweet graph by network. I notice that Spike TV is just barely right of center, which is interesting since it once had some crappy conservative comedy cartoon.
April 14, 2010 at 6:22 am
A reasonable guess is that viewer age is the main factor behind the Republican/high turnout nature of network news, as programming of this sort attracts mostly older viewers. Just note all the medical-related advertisements during any network news broadcast. You can be sure that advertisers know who watches.
One thing that surprises me is the notable Republican lean of sports programming – it’s even (slightly) more Republican than religious programming. I’d attribute it to the fact that most sports watchers are men, but (a) the political gender gap isn’t all that great, and (b) science fiction programming is also mostly male-appealing yet is on the Democratic side of the voting scale.
Peter
April 15, 2010 at 9:07 am
The golf network has the highest turnout?
April 16, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Like the commenter above said, age is presumably a major factor. Golfers also tend to be affluent, which correlates with voting.
April 18, 2010 at 10:16 am
I am amused by the fact that “kids shows” don’t have the lowest turnout value.
Nice find.
April 18, 2010 at 5:30 pm
They are only counting people of voting age. Otherwise the “kids shows” clump would probably be a lot larger.