CarTalk/BestRide poll results

[Pages:8]CarTalk/BestRide poll results

Does Your Ride Predict Your Vote? Dan Fortunato

February 15, 2016

Contents

1 General information

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2 Summary

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3 Brand popularity

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3.1 What are the most popular brands per candidate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3.2 What are the top models per candidate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3.3 How do the most popular models compare? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 What does the average car for a candidate look like?

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5 How does car class compare?

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5.1 Electric cars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5.2 Luxury cars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5.3 Age of cars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1 General information

The poll was dominated by votes for Bernie and Hillary, due to the NPR online-only nature of the poll. Here's the overall poll breakdown.

Candidate

Percentage of votes

Bernie Sanders

48.84%

Hillary Clinton

24.25%

Donald Trump

6.68%

Ted Cruz

4.41%

Marco Rubio

4.45%

Jill Stein

3.11%

John Kasich

2.07%

Ben Carson

2.03%

Jeb Bush

1.16%

Chris Christie

1.15%

Gary Johnson

0.87%

Carly Fiorina

0.81%

Rick Santorum

0.10%

Roque De La Fuente 0.08%

Jim Gilmore

0.02%

This skewing affects how many data points we have to go off of for each candidate, but doesn't affect trends we see necessarily, since we normalize the data to account for this. To find many of the trends discussed below, I compute probabilities for a subset of the data and compare it to those same probabilities over the whole dataset. This involves computing a z-score and p-value that quantifies the statistical significance of differences we see between the two distributions. When I say something is statistically significant below, I am usually using the metric of p < 0.05. I've also dropped the candidates or cars that only got a couple votes, so that their small sample sizes don't skew things.

I'll also say something like "electric car owners are more likely to support Hillary Clinton relative to the background population." This does not mean that electric car owners support Hillary more than Bernie. This means that the percentage of votes for Hillary among electric car owners is greater than the percentage of votes for Hillary among the entire poll population, and that this difference is statistically significant.

2 Summary

? Bernie Sanders supporters are statistically more likely to drive Honda, Subaru, or Volvo, while Hillary Clinton supporters are statistically more likely drive Toyota, Lexus, and Acura. Both are statistically less likely to drive Ford, but Bernie's disfavor of the 1% shows in that his supporters are unlikely to drive Lexus too.

? Supporters of Republican candidates (specifically Trump, Cruz, and Rubio) are more likely to drive truck brands like Ford, Chevrolet, or Dodge, and less likely to drive Toyotas. Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, and John Kasich supporters are more likely to drive higher-end brands.

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? Bernie supporters drive Honda Fits, Subaru Foresters, and Volvo 240s, as expected.

? Prius owners support Hillary Clinton 40% more than the general population, and support Ted Cruz 126% more than the general population. Similarly, Dodge owners favor Trump 50% more than the general population.

? Toyota Camry drivers are more statistically likely to support a Democrat, and Honda Accord and Ford Fusion drivers are more likely to support a Republican.

? Supporters of democratic and green party candidates (Jill Stein, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders) drive more fuel-efficient cars than supporters of Republican candidates (Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz) on average. Stein supporters clearly live up to the Green party name. Ben Carson supporters also tended to drive more fuel-efficient cars, in line with Hillary and Bernie, but this could be slightly skewed by the smaller population of votes for him and the fact that he had multiple Tesla owners (whose MPG was set at 100).

? Sanders, Cruz, and Clinton supporters drive the cheapest cars on average, and Fiorina, Kasich, and Stein supporters drive the most expensive cars on average.

? Electric car owners are more statistically likely to support a Democrat. They are more likely to support Hillary Clinton than the general population is, and less likely to support Ted Cruz.

? Luxury car owners are twice as likely to support Carly Fiorina and 50% more likely to support Marco Rubio as the general population is. They are about 20% likely to support Bernie Sanders and 20% more likely to support Hillary Clinton.

? Owner of older cars (pre-2000) are more likely to support Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, and less likely to support Hillary Clinton, relative to the background population. Owners of newer cars (post-2000) are more likely to support Hillary Clinton.

3 Brand popularity

3.1 What are the most popular brands per candidate?

Here's a breakdown of the top brands by candidate, normalized by overall brand popularity.

Candidate Ben Carson Bernie Sanders Carly Fiorina Chris Christie

Most statistically likely brands THINK Chevrolet Aston Martin Honda Subaru Volvo Porsche Ford Suzuki Mercury Cadillac BMW

Most statistically unlikely brands Subaru Volkswagen Mazda Lexus Ford Buick Toyota Honda Volkswagen Honda Toyota Kia

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Dodge Donald Trump Ford

Pontiac

Gary Johnson

Jeep Land Rover

Dodge

Toyota Hillary Clinton Lexus

Acura

Jeb Bush

Ford Studebaker

Oldsmobile

Jill Stein

Toyota DeSoto

Lamborghini

John Kasich

Infiniti Acura

BMW

Marco Rubio

GMC Lexus

Ford

Ted Cruz

Chevrolet GMC

Mercury

Toyota Honda Volkswagen Toyota Lexus Mercedes-Benz Chevrolet Ford Pontiac Subaru Volvo Kia Honda Subaru Ford Hyundai Saturn Scion Toyota Subaru Kia Toyota Volkswagen Volvo

3.2 What are the top models per candidate?

Within those top brands, we can look at the top performing models for each candidate.

Candidate

Most statistically likely models

Ben Carson

THINK City Chevrolet Corvette

Aston Martin Virage

Honda Fit Bernie Sanders Subaru Forester

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Volvo 240

Carly Fiorina

Porsche Boxster Ford Mustang

Suzuki Samurai

Chris Christie

Mercury Monterey Cadillac Escalade EXT

BMW 525

Dodge Durango Donald Trump Ford Explorer

Pontiac Grand Prix

Gary Johnson

Jeep Wrangler Land Rover Discovery

Dodge Charger

Toyota RAV4 Hillary Clinton Lexus RX 350

Acura RDX

Jeb Bush

Ford Taurus Studebaker Avanti

Oldsmobile Intrigue

John Kasich

Infiniti J30 Acura NSX

BMW Z4

Marco Rubio

GMC Canyon Lexus GS 300

Ford Fusion

Ted Cruz

Chevrolet Silverado GMC 1500

Mercury Sable

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3.3 How do the most popular models compare?

Model

Most statistically likely candidates Least statistically likely candidates

Marco Rubio Honda Accord Jeb Bush

Donald Trump Jill Stein

John Kasich

Gary Johnson

Jeb Bush Toyota Camry Bernie Sanders

Jill Stein Marco Rubio

Hillary Clinton

Carly Fiorina

Ford Fusion

Marco Rubio Jeb Bush

Jill Stein Ben Carson

John Kasich

Ted Cruz

We can also compare specific car/candidate combinations. For instance, among the general population in the poll, respondents are 2 times more likely to support Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton, while Prius owners were only 1.44 times more likely to support Bernie over Hillary. This means that, relative to the background probability, Prius owners support Hillary 1.39 times more than the general population.

We can do this same thing for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. The general population favors Trump 1.5 times more than Cruz, but Prius owners favor Cruz 1.75 times more then Trump. This means that, relative to the background probability, Prius owners support Cruz 2.6 times more than the general population. Similarly, Dodge owners favor Trump 1.5x times more than the general population.

Here's a word cloud of brands by political affiliation. The color is determined by examining whether the distribution among owners of that brand is swayed relative to the background distribution, and the size of the word corresponds to the magnitude of the swaying.

We can also see how the brands of cars naturally cluster based on the probabilities that their owners vote for Republicans or Democrats. Two car brands are connected if they are closest to each other in probability space, and clusters are built hierarchically. Branches can be swapped at any level, since elements in one

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cluster are all equidistant from elements in a branching cluster. I've colored the cars by their likelihood of having Republican or Democrat supporters. What's interesting to see is that clusters of similar cars naturally form. There is a definite truck cluster, luxury cluster, and midsize SUV cluster.

4 What does the average car for a candidate look like?

I averaged across some different features (MSRP, MPG, and weight) of the cars for a given candidate to try to construct the typical car that a candidate's supporter would drive. Here's what that looks like.

Candidate

MSRP MPG Weight (lb)

Ben Carson

$30,209 28.5

3558

Bernie Sanders $25,770 28.5

3318

Carly Fiorina $33,560 24.4

3604

Chris Christie $30,344 27.7

3607

Donald Trump $29,545 23.6

3592

Gary Johnson $29,767 25.7

3518

Hillary Clinton $28,650 28.5

3467

Jeb Bush

$31,065 25.6

3722

Jill Stein

$39,601 29.9

3365

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John Kasich

$31,898 25.0

3673

Marco Rubio $31,626 24.7

3644

Ted Cruz

$27,816 24.7

3498

Sorting this data by each category shows some interesting things. Sanders, Cruz, and Clinton supporters (in that order) have the least expensive cars on average, and Stein, Fiorina, and Kasich supporters have the most expensive cars on average. Trump, Fiorina, and Rubio supporters have the least fuel-efficient cars on average, and Stein, Carson, and Sanders supporters have the most fuel-efficient cars on average. Bush, Kasich, and Rubio supporters have the heaviest cars on average, and Sanders, Stein, and Clinton supporters have the lightest cars on average.

5 How does car class compare?

5.1 Electric cars

Relative to the background of the general public, electric car owners vote differently (and unsurprisingly, more Democratically). Specifically, while the 73% of poll responses were for a Democrat and 24% were for a Republican, among electric car owners 86% of responses were for a Democrat and 14% were for a Republican. Relative to the background distribution, electric car owners are statistically more likely to support Hillary Clinton, and are statistically more unlikely to support Ted Cruz (and funnily enough Jill Stein, even though she is a Green Party candidate).

5.2 Luxury cars

Among luxury car owners we also see some differences. Relative to the background population, luxury car owners are more likely to support Carly Fiorina (1.9x), Marco Rubio (1.5x), and Hillary Clinton (1.2x), and less likely to support Bernie Sanders (0.86x).

5.3 Age of cars

I examined cars that were made before the year 2000 relative to the general population. It turns out that owners of these older cars are statistically more likely to support Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, and statistically less likely to support Hillary Clinton. Owners of cars made after 2000 are statistically more likely to support Hillary Clinton.

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