A new poll of the liberal sports media shows exactly what one might expect from reading their daily coverage of sports. Chiefly, it showed that only a tiny four percent of members of the sports media are supporters of President Donald Trump.
The folks at The Big Lead Sports decided to poll members of the sports media to see just how far left they are, and the results are about what you would expect.
The Big Lead polled 51 members of the sports media, allowing their answers to remain anonymous, to encourage the media to fill out the survey without fear of being “outed” as liberals. The site also polled 312 readers as a control group to see if the media was more, less, or the same politically as the site’s readers.
The poll revealed that most considered themselves Democrats or “independents,” with 58 percent calling themselves Democrats and 37 percent claiming to be “independents.” As to the GOP, well, only three respondents (a measly 6 percent) said they were Republican.
The Big Lead points out that a recent Gallop poll said the breakdown above is far out of whack compared to the general population which sees 31 percent each claiming to be Democrat or Republican and 37 percent claiming to be “independent.”
However, party affiliation was the least of the site’s poll finding, when asked if they were socially liberal, 76.5 percent said they were extremely liberal.
When the question turned to how they cast their vote in 2016, a whopping 80.4 percent said they voted for 2016 loser Hillary Clinton. While only a few said they cast their ballot for Donald Trump. In fact, more sports reporters said they didn’t vote at all (9.8 percent) than said they voted for Trump.
For its control group, the site’s readers voted for Clinton at 50.3 percent, while Trump and a third party candidate each got 20 percent.
The sports reporters also favored abortion (86.3 percent) while the general readers were closer to the middle (55.8 percent). In addition, 88.2 percent called themselves firm believers in global warming, while the readers only accepted climate change at 48 percent.
Gun ownership was also rejected by the sports reporters at a number far higher than that of regular Americans. Of all the reporters asked, only three polled said they owned a gun. Meanwhile, national average fro gun ownership in America is 36 percent.
The reporters also self-identified as leftists in other ways. All but one chose left-wing news sources as their main sources of news, 78.4 percent agreed that sports media should be “very liberal,” and 76.5 percent wanted to see pot legalized.
In its conclusion, The Big Lead makes a point that has been echoed by other members of the sports media recently… not that this conclusion helps the matter.
“The sports media clearly leans left. But, it may be a stretch to say that alienates a significant portion of the audience,” Ty Duffy wrote. “The sports media is clustered in major cities and along the coasts because that’s where much of its audience is.”
This makes sense, most sports writers work for big media outfits in places like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
However, this also means that a relatively small community of liberal sports writers in liberal enclaves, are writing for a massive percentage of the country. Which, according to the numbers in this poll, do not hold the same values or opinions. While that has probably always been true in media, to some extent, given that media has always been coastal and liberal. However, one wonders if 50 years ago the ideological gap between scribe and fan was quite this stark.
In any event, this is a large part of the reason why outlets like ESPN have lost viewers. No one is serving half the number of sports fans in the country, and many of those fans are simply walking away from their once fervent love of sports because of it.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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