Datastory
Datastory Introduction
Around the world, the influence of political opinions extends far beyond the realm of government and legislation. Their ideologies and values shape a wide array of societal aspects, including economic policies, social norms, and consumer behavior.
Today, we will focus, throught the two major parties, on the influence that the American politics have on consumer habits, and more particularly on the beer consumption.
We will analyze this through different angles. First, we will provide a brief introduction to how politics functions in the United States. Then we will enter in the main subject by iteratively observe how consumption type and beer characteristics could be influenced by the political opinions.
That being said, we will assume that the differences observed between states are mainly, or at least significantly, linked to political opinion, which may not necessarily be the case. Indeed, differences in beer preferences between states could also be influenced by other factors, such as the climate for a basic exemple.
U.S. Politics
The United States is a federal republic with a political system dominated by two major parties:
The differences between states are influenced by demographics, culture, and economic priorities. Rrural areas are often leaned Republican, while urban areas are more Democratic. There are 50 states, each one with its own government and laws, and they have a significantly different political distribution between parties.
Some states are known to be republican and others to be democratic. However, there is a group of states that have no clear political majority, they are often referred to as Swing States. These states can flip between parties during elections, making them very important for the outcome of presidential races.
Presidential States Results
* The graphic represent the democratic states in blue and the republican's in red.
** The first value given for each state is the difference in percentage between the two main parties.
Indeed, we observe that the big majority of states did not change political affiliation during the 2008, 2012, and 2016 presidential elections. It is also evident that, although most states have a dominant party, some states demonstrate strong loyalty to a particular party. This is notably the case for Wyoming and Utah, which are firmly aligned with the Republicans, as well as New York, California, and Vermont, which show significant support for the Democrats.
Consumption Type
When it comes to beer, does where it is brewed really matter? You might imagine Republicans reaching for a trusty hometown lager while Democrats explore an imported craft masterpiece from across the globe. But is there a deeper connection between political leanings and the types of beer people consume, local, national or international? Here, we cracked open the data to uncover whether political orientation influences a state’s beer preferences by origin, or if taste buds don’t really care.
Surprised? While democrats do tend to give slightly higher ratings overall, suggesting they’re more forgiving or simply more enthusiastic beer lovers, Republicans aren’t as tied to “beer brewed from home” as the stereotype might suggest. Meanwhile, neutral leaning states sit comfortably in the middle, aligning more with Democrats than Republicans. In other words, the data suggests that while there are subtle differences, the political label alone doesn’t affect a drinker’s palate.
Beer Characteristics
Imagine yourself and your friends enjoying a refreshing beer at a summer BBQ while the grill is blazing. Suddenly, the conversation turns political—one person is all about their red states, the other is defending the blue. But here’s the real question: can the beer you're drinking say something about your political leanings? In this part, we investigate whether there are any unexpected trends in the beer preferences of Republican and Democratic states. Do we all enjoy a nice beer, regardless of party, or is there a definite divide?
This bar plot shows how different beer styles made their way into the ‘top 5’ rankings across states over the years, with a focus on Republican and Democratic territories. So, what does your beer choice really say about you ?
Interesting !
It looks like we can see concrete preferences in beer styles over time. We see for example a clear peak of popularity of the Gueuze style in democratic states in the years 2013-2014. Lambic-Fruit seems to be preferred in the democratic states too. Contrary to the Gueuze style, the Quadrupel and the American Double/Imperial Stout styles show a constant fame across the country and throughout the years !
Let's continue !
When we picture someone drinking a strong beer, we often imagine a Viking or a tough cowboy, right? But what if we told you that the strength of beer could reveal something deeper about America's political divide? This time, we dive into the average alcohol content of top beers from each state to see whether Republicans or Democrats prefer stronger brews. Once again, could the choice of beer be a reflection of political identity? Let’s find out! Here is an interesting plot on the average alcohol content in the preferred beers of each state throughout the years :
Well well well...
At first sight, the alcohol content of the favorite beers doesn't seem to be very different between the states. Indeed the state with the highest mean ABV changes every year, and the race plot doesn't show strong domination of a party when it comes to being badass (even though some years a party dominates the national stage).
However, the left plot shows suprising results, it really seems like the global mean ABV across the states rises over the years as it becomes darker on the map ! Are people really more alcoholic over the years ? Observe that these values are pretty high for beers, which is very intriguing... The hypothesis that the users of these websites are confirmed drinker that tends to prefer stronger beers may be possible.
Bonus : Review Vocabulary
We also tried to do an analysis on the words and their frequencies used in the reviews, there was generally very little or simply no differences, but we found an interesting result by looking at patriotic and US-related words.
We can notice on this bar plot that the users from Republican states are in general more likely to use patriotic and US-related words than those of Democratic States. The most noticeable difference is for the word "american" itself, which appears in 5.37% of Republican reviews compared to only 3.73% of Democratic ones.
Conclusion
The results we have obtained show a little correlation between the political opinions and the beer habits. The result aren’t very significant because of many factor, but the main one is the small difference between republicans and democrats population in each state. Indeed, the differences in habits are likely relatively minor, making their study even more challenging given the narrow political distribution within states (for example, 49% Republicans versus 45% Democrats). It is also important to remember that other political parties can play a role, having for example garnered around 9–10% of the votes in the 2016 presidential election (Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton). Furthermore, other variables could, therefore, have a greater influence than political opinions.
A solution, to solve this problem and make our results more precise and accurate, would be to have / obtain the affiliated party of a part of the users. It can maybe be achieve by asking for it, as an optional field, during the registration of the user on the beer rating website. That information could be crutial for performing deeper analyses on this subject, since it would permit to accurately split the data for each political opinion of interest.