Pornhub just published some fascinating statistical analysis after researching the viewing habits of their users. As the world’s largest porn site, they certainly have plenty of data at their disposal.
Pornhub Statisticians (worth the gig for the business card alone) set out to answer the question: Who watches more porn, Republicans or Democrats? In the process of finding the answer, they made another interesting discovery: they were able to reverse-engineer the data to retroactively “predict” the state-by-state 2012 election results with pretty good accuracy.
Put bluntly, blue states watch quite a bit more porn than red states. On a pages-per-visit basis, the disparity is slight: 9.20 for red states vs 9.32 for blue states. But on a per capita basis, the gap widens considerably. Residents of blue states view an average of 137 pages per year, 13% more than the 121 pages the average red state citizen takes in:
The most prolific porn-viewing state from the red side is Kansas, at a staggering 194 pageviews per capita. Nevada (166 pageviews per capita) was tops among blue states — although I have to think that figure is radically lifted by tourists “blowing off steam” in Las Vegas. Full state breakdowns:
After noting that only two of the ten most prolific porn-watching states (by pageviews per capita) were red and only two of the ten least-prolific porn-watching states were blue, Pornhub points out that its data might actually be a valuable resource for political prognosticators:
If we were to just use porn consumption per capita as a predictor of political orientation, we could have predicted the results of the 2012 elections with 70% accuracy.
Using the same data, our statisticians could also have correctly predicted election results in 9 of the 12 swing states (75% accuracy). It’s these hotly contested battleground states that often decide federal elections due to their changing political preferences.
When it comes to forecasting election results, pornography is more Nate Silver than Karl Rove.