How Food Preferences Vary by Political Ideology: a Hunch Report

Today we’re releasing a report called “How Food Preferences Vary by Political Ideology“. It explores how someone’s self-identification as either a conservative or liberal corresponds with their food preferences and choices.

The report is based on two types of aggregate, anonymized data from Hunch: 1) Correlations between some of the 25 million “Teach Hunch About You” (THAY) questions which have been answered to date, and 2) Correlations between a THAY question about political ideology and user preferences for specific topic results such as cheese varieties, fast food restaurants, or what to have for lunch.

Here are a few factoids to whet your appetite:

When it comes to choice of lettuce, everyone likes romaine, but conservatives trend heavily towards iceberg and liberals trend heavily towards arugula
For kitchen styles, conservatives vote for the wooden, country look and liberals lean towards sleek, stainless steel
Conservatives are more likely to drink sugar soda but less likely to drink wine; liberals are more likely to eat vegetarian options and more frequent portions of fruit

The executive summary, in a nutshell:

Conservatives trend towards “homey”, familiar, comfort foods and meat-heavy options. They are more likely than liberals to indulge in fast food and enjoy splurges like cheeseburgers or deep dish pizza. Their idea of international food is a “mainstream” option such as Italian.
Liberals are more likely to be adventuresome eaters, choosing international options such as Japanese or Thai. They eat fast food less frequently than conservatives, and when they do splurge on fast food they have a tendency to favor specialty, regional chains. Liberals are more likely to choose healthy or vegetarian alternatives when given the choice.
Although there are plenty of food-related differences that skew by political ideology, there’s still plenty of common ground for the dinner table. So there’s no need to let a little political disagreement get in the way of a great shared meal.

There are a lot more specifics in the full 7 page, 2100 word report, which is also available in a downloadable pdf version. And for those who are more visually oriented, an illustrator summed up the report this way:

Conservatives trend towards comfort food staples and meat-heavy options

Liberals trend towards more international cuisine and vegetarian alternatives

Again, you can see the full report here. This is one of many reports we’ll be creating based on Hunch data, so there’s much more to come.