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I'm sure everyone has seen the Ann Coulter's comments and it got me wondering.
Are there any other conservatives (people that lean to the right) that are avid soccer fans here? I ask becasue the highest level of the sport here in the US is the MLS. They changed a marketing strategy in the early 2000's to where they started targeting urban 20/30 year olds (think hipsters). Generally, the majority of these folks tend to be liberal.
So, can a correlation be made that soccer fans (in the US) tend to be more liberal? For the record, we are all Americans.... so that part of Coulter's comments is pure crap.
Just wondering you thoughts.
For what it's worth I'm a huge soccer fan-- and I lean right (conservative).
I think overall it's a mixed bag. What do you think?
This thread can be deleted-- after browsing through the site it looks like this topic is touched upon in the Soccer forum. My apologies for not looking first.
Unless of course, folks reply.... which wouldn't hurt my feelings either way :-)
I'm very far right leaning economically and would never in my life vote for a Democrat. (Well I would as long as I agreed with them but I doubt I would)
I am a fan of soccer in the World Cup and enjoy it. I find it very hard to believe that a sport is really turning into a conservative vs liberal debate. It kind of shows just how pathetic our country is.. and I'm a pretty political minded guy. It's just a sport... it doesn't really make sense.
I think people take people like Ann Coulter too seriously
I'm very far right leaning economically and would never in my life vote for a Democrat. (Well I would as long as I agreed with them but I doubt I would)
I am a fan of soccer in the World Cup and enjoy it. I find it very hard to believe that a sport is really turning into a conservative vs liberal debate. It kind of shows just how pathetic our country is.. and I'm a pretty political minded guy. It's just a sport... it doesn't really make sense.
I think people take people like Ann Coulter too seriously
You don't have to debate it if you don't want to, but it's certainly potentially debatable. In recent years there have been plenty of studies done producing stereotype-ready generalizations about the differing habits of liberals and conservatives in different areas of life--purchasing tendencies, commute styles (liberals being more likely to take different routes to and from work while conservatives tend to maintain a routine), responses to uncertainty, etc. If you looked at the collective fanbases of say the NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA, NASCAR, and MLS, I'm guessing that people who identified as fans of that last would also identify as more liberal (collectively) than for any of the others (accounting for potential overlap--I'd call myself a liberal fan of the NFL as well as the MLS, for example). In fact I'd bet pretty heavily on it. NBA fans might actually skew more to identification/affiliation with the Democrats, but not more liberal. NHL would require investigating due to the fact that it's more of a regional sport, being most popular in states that lean blue (NY, MN, PA, MA, MI, IL, probably still CT). Regarding MLB, NFL, NASCAR, there's not even a debate IMO.
Of course a potential pitfall in all of these conversation is the oversimplification of the terms "liberal" and "conservative". You refer to yourself as very far right leaning economically, which implies that you're not very far right leaning socially. I recall you're a poker player, which in and of itself pretty much precludes one from being far right leaning socially. When I casually refer to myself as a liberal, to the extent that I ever actually do that in real life (meaning, pretty much never, in terms of announcing "I am a liberal", anyway), I mean that in the sense that I generally lean liberal on both economic and social fronts. Given the right circumstances, I'd lean much, much more strongly liberal (in just about every way conceivable) than I do at the moment. But even as I dream of some democratic socialist semi-utopia that will never exist in reality, I still will (on very rare occasions) vote for a Republican at the local level...pragmatism > ideology.
This discussion reminds me of a thread started on this website by a poster named AtkinsonDan where he asked if people thought professional sports fans *in general* were more conservative than non-sports fans. I forget what the ~25 people who voted in that poll had to say on the topic, heh.
Last edited by Matt Marcinkiewicz; 06-30-2014 at 10:50 PM..
Matt-
My thoughts regarding the NBA and the NFL- Most NBA fans that I know are definetly democrats. African Americans make up a large chunk of the fan bases and they generally will vote for democrats. Are they uber liberal dems? Ehh not sure about that but I'd bet the farm that they voted for Obama in overwhelming numbers over McCain and Romney.
With the NFL I'd say it's probably evenly split.
MLB without a doubt has the largest percentages of fan bases that are conservative.
All that said, I absoltely agree with burgler-- this is pretty pathetic to turn this into a liberal v conservative debate. Sports is the one of the few things in the world that bring people of all different religion, worldviews, etc together. But Coulter's comments really got me thinking thus my original question.
I lean right both socially/ economically and have fallen in love with the world's game. Now my son plays it and I try to help coach the team as much as possible. While we wouldn't make the decision for him we are absolutely steering him away from playing American football because of what medical science has learned over the last decade in regards to the constant subconcussive hits that are just part of the game. Maybe thats all for another topic.
From my experience, there are a lot of conservatives who love the beautiful game. In the US the sport, at the competitive level is expensive and a solid middle class thing. A lot of these middle class households out in Texas, Kansas City, Orlando and such are rather conservative. Drew Carey is a big conservative but loves soccer and is part owner of the Seattle Sounders.
So this idea that soccer is left wing is another right wing canard by a die hard old guard that hates change of any kind.
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