More millennials recognize Pikachu than Joe Biden

Pikachu and Joe Biden don’t have a whole lot in common.

One is an electric mouse that paralyzes prey with thunder bolts; the other is a silver fox who melts hearts with a smile. One was born in 1996; the other in 1942. One battles Bulbasaurs and Zubats; the other negotiates federal spending levels with cranky senators.

But the biggest difference between Pokémon’s spokes-creature and America’s vice president may be their recognizability among the country’s younger generation.

Back in July, Vox and Morning Consult ran a poll asking 2,002 Americans to identify a picture of Pikachu and a picture of Vice President Joe Biden. Among millennials (defined as those under 30 for this post) who responded, 98 percent recognized the cute yellow Pokémon — while only 61 percent recognized the man one heartbeat away from running the United States.

While 61 percent of millennials correctly identified our vice president, 6 percent thought he was Speaker of the House Paul Ryan; 3 percent mistook him for Mitch McConnell, the majority leader of the Senate; and 1 percent of respondents were convinced he was Newt Gingrich.

Only 2 percent of this same demographic incorrectly identified Pikachu (one person marked him as Charmander; the rest simply didn’t know).

Pikachu has been around for two decades and was one of the foremost celebrities during millennials’ formative years. Still, the near-perfect recognition here hints at the recent cultural ubiquity of Pokémon Go.

As we’ve reported, a vast swath of Pokémon Go players are millennials — so it’s no surprise that 96 percent of all millennials have heard of the game in some capacity.

What is surprising, though, is that nine out of 10 Americans ages 18 to 65 are at least cursorily familiar with Pokémon Go.

Of 2,002 Americans surveyed, 36 percent report hearing “a lot” about Pokémon Go, 34 percent have had “some” exposure, and 19 percent had minimal exposure. Only 10 percent are uninitiated.

But when it comes to actually playing the game, there is a much wider disparity between millennials and everyone else. Forty-three percent of millennials report playing once per week or more, compared with 15 percent of the general public.

How does 15 percent stack up against other games and platforms?

For what it’s worth, the 15 percent of Americans who do play Pokémon Go are really passionate about it: A whopping 47 percent of them report playing at work.

We can only hope Joe Biden isn’t among them.