These are the brands that divide America
Your dish soap and coffee can say a lot about your politics.
While a Trump presidency might be bad news for, say, Tesla, and while a Harris presidency might be good for Planned Parenthood, the vast majority of American brands have little real stake in the upcoming election. That said, most brands are certainly partisan, in the sense that their customer base leans notably liberal or conservative. And in turn, that’s an important bit of information for those companies.
Only 29% of brands are considered bipartisan, according to a new report by survey firm YouGov, meaning liberals and conservatives consider purchasing them at roughly equal rates, or within 10 percent of each other. (Note that YouGov only surveyed the 53.9% of Americans who consider themselves to be either liberal or conservative, while the 32.5% that said they were moderate and another 13.7% said they weren’t sure were not included in this study.)
“For most of these brands where their bottom line are revenue- and dollar-based, I think being nonpartisan is probably the goal,” Ryan Gmerick, VP of new business sales at YouGov, told Sherwood.
The aspiration may be to live up to Michael Jordan’s famous quip from 1990 – "Republicans buy sneakers, too” – but in practice, public perception doesn’t usually pan out this way. To paraphrase the libs, what is most interesting is our differences. YouGov ranked a bunch of brands by consumer category with the biggest gap between the share of liberals and conservatives who would consider purchasing them (not necessarily which brand each preferred the most).
The real gems are when seemingly benign consumer brands seem to have a huge partisan slant.
Liberals, for example, over-index on Target and Ikea for retail, while conservatives lean most stringently toward Hobby Lobby.
You’ve got your LaCroix liberals and A&W conservatives. Conservatives go in for Folgers coffee while liberals like Naked Juice.
Conservatives were more likely to shop for Jimmy Dean by a 15 percentage point margin, while vegetarian meat brands Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat led with liberals by about 10 percentage points.
Liberals place a premium on Subarus, whereas conservatives opt for Fords.
Conservatives are more likely to choose Dawn for their dishes, while liberals wash up after meals with the more environmentally conscious Seventh Generation.
Conservatives chow down on Cracker Barrel and Olive Garden, while liberals are more likely to eat out at California Pizza Kitchen and The Cheesecake Factory.
Google Docs, Reddit, and Instagram had a big advantage among the left, while X is preferred by the right.
Of course, a lot of this disparity can be chalked up to demographic differences among liberals — who are more likely to be younger, female and live in cities in the North or West — and conservatives — who are relatively older, male, rural, and live in the South.
“The drivers behind the differences are probably going to vary greatly depending on what the category is,” Gmerick said.
A store like Bass Pro Shops is going to be more popular among conservatives in rural areas where there’s more fishing and hunting, for example, while stores that are more common on the coasts, like Trader Joe’s, may be preferred among the majority liberals who live there.
Age also is a major factor.
“You have conservatives that tend to be older,” according to Gmerick. “I think that part of the story is that people are just kind of set in what they do after a certain period in their life. It's more difficult for a new brand to break through, no matter what the category is.”
Something like conservatives’ relative willingness to consider staying at Trump Hotels, however, is much more overtly political. (Liberals veered toward Airbnb.)
The biggest differences, of course, are in advocacy groups, with conservatives vastly preferring the NRA while liberals flocked most divergently to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. The same goes for TV networks. I’ll let you guess who prefers Fox News and Newsmax to MSNBC and CNN.
And for some brands whose consumers lean one way or another, their difference is a selling point. That’s led some of those brands to take part in the culture wars, like Ben & Jerry’s (Ritz leans right) and Chic-fil-A (liberals prefer Starbucks and Chipotle). Bud Light, which ended up in conservative crosshairs because of an endorsement by a transgender influencer, is now favored by liberals, while Coors Light is preferred by conservatives.
A brand’s success can come down to how they spin this partisanship.
“For certain categories, certain brands, their products or what they sell isn't necessarily tailored to the general population,” Gmerick said. “They know their audience, they know who they want to go after, and so they can actually lean in to some of the ideology in their messaging to really cater to what they know their audience set wants.”
Of course, some brands manage to thread the political needle, though those are few and far between.
Here’s a look at the most bipartisan brands by sector:
Just 28 brands of nearly a thousand popular brands YouGov looked at had less than 1 percent difference in purchase consideration by political ideology, meaning there was virtually no difference in whether a liberal or conservative would consider purchasing them.
Those safest brands include Amazon, Maybelline, KFC, the very American-sounding American Eagle and Best Western, the organizer of the great American pastime, the MLB, and Neosporin, because if we’re pricked do we not all bleed?
