Online shoppers favor Hillary Clinton, while porn watchers prefer Donald Trump.
Two of the most unusual polls in the 2016 presidential election have measured which candidate pornographic video watchers prefer and how online shoppers behave based on political donations.
The polls have women, who dominate online shopping, favoring Clinton while men, who more often visit the porn website, leaning toward Trump.
The Beacon Journal cautions readers that because methodology was not provided with either poll, the results should be taken with a large grain of salt, although the online shopping poll provides deeper insights about political preference and consumer trends. Also, as these polls draw responses from a very select group of Americans based on very specific behavior, the results are not reflective of the general election and should not be thought to accurately predict the outcome of the election.
But first, let’s take a look at where professional pollsters have the presidential race as of Friday.
Nationally, Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 2.6 percentage points in a Real Clear Politics averaging of reputable polling. These polls, which are representative of likely voters, include third-party candidates Libertarian Gary Johnson and Jill Stein of the Green Party, who together carried 12 percent of the vote in September but have seen their collective support shrink to 6 percent as voters abandon them for one of the two major-party candidates.
Clinton’s lead is within most polls’ margins of error, meaning that the winner of the popular vote is anyone’s guess just days before the election. But as America learned again in 2000, it’s the electoral college, not popularity, that matters.
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, a political website named after the total number of electoral votes in the presidential election, has downgraded Clinton’s chances of winning, though she holds a 68 percent chance of taking the White House in the most recent election modeling.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics has Clinton taking 293 electoral college votes to Trump’s 214. Either candidate needs 270 to win, clearly favoring Clinton at this point. The projection has Ohio’s 18 electoral votes going to Trump, whose support here has remained strong as other battleground states have tipped for Clinton.
CNN also has shaded Ohio red for Trump in its electoral modeling.
Now, about those risqué polls.
The pornographic website Redtube polled 1 million users, including 30,461 in Ohio (a top 10 state to participate in the non-scientific survey).
The results, released Thursday, show that 52.1 percent of users prefer Trump while 46.3 percent favor Clinton. Before you get your moral and ethical panties in a twist, remember that the poll did not record respondents’ gender, age, race or other demographics that help journalists and pollsters understand trends and ensure that the sample reflects the American electorate.
But there is one overlapping characteristic of the porn sites’ users and Trump supporters — mostly men.
“Yes,” laughed Brian Gross, the website’s spokesman. “I would say most clients are men.”
The next poll measured the political and consumer behavior of 4 million online shoppers.
The results, released Friday morning, are more nuanced than the political inclinations of porn watchers.
Instead of asking whom they would vote for, Slice Intelligence, a market research firm that tracks consumer behavior, worked backwards. The Silicon Valley tech agency analyzed the online shopping habits of consumers known to have donated to Trump, Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent and the hero of a young and digitally active generation.
The data produced by the analysis show that, because women shop online more often than men, overall results skewed toward Clinton donors. Shoppers at retailers that cater to women — J. Jill, Mod Cloth and Ann Taylor — were highly likely to give to Clinton.
Conversely, Trump donors shopped more often at Cabela’s, Best Buy or subscribed to Sirius XM satellite radio. Trump supporters were also more likely to spend on hotels, media and entertainment, especially sports-related products and video games. Among the online shopping destinations with the highest concentrations of Trump donors were Riot Games, BodyBuilding.com and RockAuto.
The online shopping analysis showed Clinton supporters frequented tech-savvy services, like Google Express and Uber. The consumer palate of Trump fans was split between value-shopping (Walmart.com, Sam’s Club, Hotwire and Priceline.com) and shopping at “high-end” retailers like Tory Burch, Brooks Brothers, Ralph Lauren and Nest.
An additional tidbit in the data is that Sanders supports shop more like Clinton supporters. There is some crossover, however, with Trump fans, particularly in online gaming. Sanders donors made many purchases from virtual gaming websites Steam, Blizzard and Sony Entertainment Network.
A large chunk of Sanders’ most unique supporters (techies and youth) show little allegiance to Clinton or Trump. This includes Sanders donors who use Google Wallet, Google Play, AirBnB or shop at trendy stores like Forever 21 or counter-culture outlets like Hot Topic.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .