Are microbrew drinkers more blue or red?

By Ira Monko, Implementation Engineer

There’s been no shortage of recent coverage on the changing demographics of the U.S., especially as they relate to our recent general election. What we haven’t seen is a deeper look into how our country’s shifting electorate is throwing back drinks, and whether or not an area’s political leanings correlate with these behaviors. If you know us, you know this is of high importance to us at Onboard Informatics.

Following the election, Pete Goldey and I mined through our extensive Local Content database to look at a key things for each state: the gender and age breakouts which may have contributed to each candidate’s success in a particular state, as well as their propensity to drink microbrewed beer.

Click to launch map

As far as methodology goes, we looked at Consumer Behavior data that looks at microbrew incidence (i.e. “If you bought a beer, what kind did you buy?”). In other words, we’re not saying Hawaiians are putting down the most Dogfish Head and Stone – but if they have a beer, it’s less likely to be a Bud Light. Each state is based to an index of 100, with the lowest microbrew-drinking states closest to 0.

The verdict

Take a look at the map to explore the intricacies at a state level (which, by the way, is a bird’s eye compared to how deep we can go – our data goes down to the block level). If we’re looking at an aggregate level, those in Blue states are more likely to drink microbrews.

Tags: beer and politics, beer consumer behavior data, beer consumption by state, beer drinker demographics, beer drinkers by state, micobrew democrat, microbrew demographics, microbrew drinker demographics, microbrew drinker profile, microbrew drinkers by state, microbrew republican.