Last week I reported on a study that used SAT scores to show that dumb people like Beyonce and smart people like Beethoven, and today we have more quasi-scientific research that highlights “the cultural similarities and differences” between Democrats and Republicans. Facebook decided to look at members “who liked the campaign page of any Democrat or Republican running for governor, U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives. We then looked at what other pages those people liked on Facebook and identified the pages that were most differentiating—that is, the pages which were disproportionately liked by the supporters of one party versus the other—and those that were most balanced.” Most of the results shouldn’t surprise anyone: Republicans tend to watch Duck Dynasty, listen to Blake Shelton, and visit Graceland. Democrats like Jon Stewart, Bob Marley, and the Empire State Building.
Classic books such as The Great Gatsby, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Catcher in the Rye are liked more by Democrats. Atlas Shrugged, unsurprisingly, isn’t. When it comes to what everyone likes, the taste range is broad. The most balanced cultural products–stuff that both Red and Blue like “equally often”–include musicians as disparate as Taylor Swift and Bon Jovi, and novelists as different as James Patterson, C.S. Lewis, and Stephen King. Disturbingly, everyone seems to be equally fond of the Jersey Shore (the place, not the show). And pretty much everybody likes The Walking Dead: if the walkers ever form a political party and begin campaigning for zombie rights, that could change.
