Recently, Facebook’s data science team decided to take an in-depth look at political polarization on their site — by exploring which musical artists, books, and TV shows were “liked” primarily by supporters of one party or the other. Here’s a chart that shows the top 20 most polarizing musicians or bands, and the top 20 who are liked nearly equally by both Democrats and Republicans (the Y axes are meaningless):
Chart: There’s no red America or blue America. There’s Taylor Swift America.
Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.
Beyond the evident divide between country and and pop, there are a few interesting findings here. First, Taylor Swift's potential to end polarization is quite evident, as she is beloved about equally by those of both major parties. Second, the Beatles are surprisingly the most polarizing group on the chart, with Democrats overwhelmingly liking them more than Republicans. Head over to this post by Winter Mason for Facebook's results on several other topics.
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