Monday, September 8, 2008

Pop Politics

Is your party alignment really dependent upon what you call a carbonated beverage? Just a little bit.

While up late eating everything in our pantry, I realized this one thing: There's a cultural divide in America. What? you say. This is a big discovery, you say. I know, I know. I'm just brilliant like that. No, hear me out. There's a cultural divide in America, and it should be visible in American English. Cultural divides very often create language shifts. It seems cultural boundaries fit themselves to linguistic boundaries, and vice versa. Well, my friends, it seems that the "Pop vs. Soda" site is backing me up on this one. Note:

Places that use "soda" primarily are definitely blue (Democrat, not blue on the map, though this is the case).
Places that use "coke" primarily are definitely red (Republican, see above).
Places that use "pop" primarily are mostly red.
Places that are sparsely populated:
If they're mostly "pop" they're probably red.
If they're mostly soda, with a significant mix of either or both of the others, they're probably swing states.
Washington, Oregon, and Arizona are a little weird here, but that may be because it's an internet poll, and people like to prove their own points, inappropriately.
Indiana. What the crap?

Further, note that there's a divide, geographically between West Coast and East Coast Dems, but that there's the coke/pop divide between Red States, which corresponds mostly to the Western Republican/Southern (Christian) Republican divide apparent in U.S. Politics.

So, in the end, look at this nice county map of it all and wonder, why didn't we think of this before? I'm going to start calling Arizonans "soda Republicans" and that's that.


*Special thanks to David Bowie (not the rather more famous rock star of the same name) of University of Central Florida for apprising me of this map's existence.

1 comment:

Ben said...

It's also pretty clear that young Mormons are "soda Republicans", belonging neither to the Fundamentalist Christian group, nor to the staunch midwesterners, and they say soda and vote McCain.