Politics and Personal Driving Preferences: Do Republicans and Democrats Drive Different Cars?

In his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, then-Senator Barack Obama complained that "experts love to cut our country into red and blue states." Obama argued that Americans have much more in common geographically than differences.

We decided to test the president's assumption about the cars Americans drive. Are red states and blue states really that different? Do conventional stereotypes like a Democrat driving a Prius and a Republican driving a truck stand up to scrutiny?

At AvtoTachki we have a huge dataset with location and detailed information about the vehicles we service. To understand what people drive in the red and blue parts of the country, we took the locations of these cars and correlated them with their states and constituencies.

We started by looking at the most unusually popular cars in each state and whether the cars in the states that supported Obama in 2012 were different from those that weren't. The most unusually popular vehicle is defined as the vehicle that is featured most frequently among our AvtoTachki users compared to the national average. The map at the beginning of this article and the table below show the results.

One of the biggest differences between the most unusually popular car in the red and blue states is the likelihood that the car was made in America. While three-quarters of the most unusual cars in the red states are made in America, less than one-third of the cars in the blue states are. Another important difference is size. The most frequently represented vehicle in the red state is more than three times more likely to be a truck or sport utility vehicle than cars in the blue states.

At the state level, clichés seem to work. But will they be if we zoom in a little further?

Out of state, we matched every car we serviced with a congressional district using the zip code of the car's location. If the car was in the constituency that elected the Democrat (District 201), we consider it blue, and if in the Republican (District 234) we consider it red. Of course, even in a Republican-controlled county, there are still many Democrats, even if they are in the majority. However, this method gives us an even better idea of ​​what people drive where a certain lot predominates than simply searching by state.

The following table shows the most popular cars in the red and blue areas.

The absolute most popular cars are very similar. In fact, the first five are exactly the same. Regardless of their political affiliation, the Americans we serve drive Japanese sedans more than any other vehicle. Toward the end of the list, we begin to see some contrast. The sixth car on the Republican list is the Ford F-150, perhaps the most iconic American-made pickup truck. This car is ranked 16th in the Democratic region. The sixth car on the Democratic list is the Volkswagen Jetta, a car with a reputation for being exceptionally safe. On the contrary, this car takes 16th place in the republican district.

But the real differences come to light when we look at cars that are most distinctly blue and red.

As in our state-level analysis, we analyzed the cars that are most popular in red and blue boroughs. We determine this by comparing the percentage of each car in Democratic or Republican areas to the overall average.

Now this list is completely different!

The cars that are most extraordinarily popular in the red states are trucks and SUVs (SUVs), with nine out of ten being American-made (the exception is the Kia Sorento SUV). By contrast, none of the most extraordinarily popular cars in democratic regions is American or a truck/SUV. The list of extraordinarily popular cars in democratic regions consists entirely of foreign-made compacts, sedans and minivans. These lists are further evidence that there is often some truth to stereotypes.

The Dodge Ram 1500 and Toyota Prius, the most unusually popular cars in the Republican and Democratic regions, respectively, symbolize the differences that cars drive in these countries.

The table above shows that vehicles in the Republican region are most likely to be American-made and equipped with V8 engines (typical of, but not exclusive to, SUVs and trucks). Cars in democratic regions are much more likely to be foreign-made and twice as likely to have a hybrid engine.

After all, when it comes to the cars we drive, Obama was only partly right about America being really purple and not red and blue. Everywhere in the United States, people drive Prius, trucks and mini Coopers, but whether a place is politically red or blue can tell us a lot about how likely they are to drive them.