Coffee is a beverage beloved by folks of all stripe. Rich, poor, left, right, people of all cause and creed find common ground in this humble beverage. But while coffee is loved equally by all, some may love it a little more equally than others. A new study finds that Democratic-leaning states are more correlated with being “coffee obsessed” than Republican states.
Created by Coffeeness, a German-based website that reviews coffee equipment, the study uses two main metrics to determine what they refer to as a “a comprehensive ‘coffee obsession’ score:” Google search data analysis and coffee shop density analysis. For search results data, Coffeeness examined search volumes of “coffee-related terms referring to both home and coffee shop consumption” to discern the total number of searches per capita for each state. Each state would then be assigned a value 1–50 based on the findings.
For the density analysis, the website used “various sources to find out the number of people per coffee shop in each state,” assigning another 1–50 point value for each state. The two scores would then be combined, giving the state’s coffee obsession score. The higher the score, the more the coffee obsessed the state is.
Next, those scores got cross-referenced against each state’s political leanings, based on how the states have voted in recent presidential elections. They found that nine of the top 10 and 15 of the top 17 scores for coffee obsession belonged to Democratic-leaning states. Idaho at eight and Ohio at 13 were the only two “red states” in the top 17 with scores of 74 and 61, respectively.
The top scores belong to the coastal elites, Massachusetts and Connecticut on the East and California, Oregon, and Washington (and Hawaii) on the West.
Coffeeness chalks up these findings to a few factors. One, bigger cities tend to have stronger coffee cultures, and many of the countries largest cities are in blue states (and even the ones in red states, like Houston and Dallas in Texas, tend to vote blue). Conversely, they state the red states may be geographically disinclined toward coffee. Many Republican strongholds are in the south, where it is hot, making the beverage theoretically less desirable to some residents, and where there is also a strong iced tea drinking culture that may be taking away some beverage mind share from coffee consumption.
There are, of course, great coffee cities within more conservative states, and this study is not the end-all be-all on the topic. Cities like Austin, Kansas City, New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami, and Bentonville, just to name a few, are all world-class destinations for specialty coffee culture, and all happen to reside within traditionally Republican states. So it’s not exactly black and white, or blue and red. Perhaps what the world needs is more coffee. It’s our last hope to bring the cat ladies and couch lovers together around the same table.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
