Poll: Sports fans closely divided on winner of upcoming Eagles-Cowboys game

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As football fans prepare themselves for the four NFL playoff match ups this weekend here is some quick is quick, fun and thoroughly unscientific polling compliments of ESPN’s SportsNation program.

Fans throughout the country routinely cast their votes on a range of sports related topics each day. In addition to their recently premiered TV program humorously tracking and analyzing the opinions of sports fans nationwide, ESPN.com goes one-up on most other websites. Their criteria for the straw poll-style questions is similar but their colorful maps indicating where support for a particular response is coming from is rather unique. Each state is represented, the whole numbers of votes and selection percentages show. Answers are colored by responses allowing for a map that delivers an affect similar to Electoral College projections shown by publications come election time.

With the start of the NFL playoffs looming this weekend today’s big topic on ESPN is of course football. The four match ups are against the Eagles and Cowboys who will tangle in Big ‘D’ tomorrow night, the Bengals and Jets earlier in the afternoon. On Sunday fans can check out highly touted contests between the Patriots and Ravens in addition to the Packers and Cardinals. Here are some of the results according to “Sports Nation”.

Which team will win the NFC Wild Card game in Dallas?

Total Votes: 87,833 (11:15 AM, Friday)

Dallas Cowboys: 53%

Philadelphia Eagles: 47%

Notes: The narrowly favored Cowboys received a majority of votes in 32-states in addition to the 55% of the vote from nearly 6,100 residing outside of the United States. Not surprisingly 78% of the 9,165 voters from the Cowboys home state of Texas pick them to win – their highest level of support in the country. They break 60% in four other states as well; Arkansas (69%), Oklahoma (67%), South Dakota (65%) and Minnesota (64%). The Eagles meanwhile are the choice in fifteen states including the District of Columbia. Logically Philadelphia draws its highest level of support in Pennsylvania (68%) and neighboring states such as Delaware (60%) and New Jersey (56%). Saints fans who saw their team suffer their first defeat at the hands of the Dallas Cowboys four weeks ago are picking the Eagles by 57% in Louisiana. Wisconsin where the Packers could potentially host a home game versus Philly in the NFC Championship also like the Eagles 54% of the time. In both instances the level of preference for a particular team to win probably outweighs the unbiased pick of who will win. Four additional states; Alaska, Illinois, Michigan and Massachusetts are split about 50-50 between each opponent.

Which team will win the NFC Wild Card game in Arizona?

Total Votes: 36,860 (11:30 AM, Friday)

Green Bay Packers: 70%

Arizona Cardinals: 30%

Notes: Far less sports fans lent their opinion on the upcoming Packers-Cardinals game than the Eagles showdown in Dallas. Perhaps this contributes to a Packers landslide victory through ESPN polling as a result. Seven in ten fans chose Green Bay, one of the hottest teams in football to pull off the modest road upset against the defending NFC champion Cardinals in Arizona. Only the state of Arizona has confidence in the home team’s chances of victory this week as 74% of the current 1,662 pick the Cardinals. By comparison Wisconsin received a far higher number of votes (4,583) in spite of being a smaller populated state. Their beloved Packers pulled in a whopping 94% of the vote in the land of Cheese Heads. Confidence in the Cardinals chances was pretty marginal all over the country. The Cards break the 40% threshold in only three states away from home; Arizona neighbors Utah (42%) and New Mexico (42%) in addition to Wyoming (40%) where just 65-votes have been cast from the smallest U.S. state. Conversely 21-states pick the Packers by more than 70% of the vote. In seven states that percentage exceeds three-quarters of the voting population led by the 78% in Delaware.

Which team will win the AFC Wild Card game in New England?

Totals Votes: 37,339 (11:45 AM, Friday)

New England Patriots: 52%

Baltimore Ravens: 48%

Notes: The closest vote in any of the four games this weekend comes out of New England where the home team Patriots edge the Baltimore Ravens 52-48%. Voting is so close in fact the five states; New York, Ohio, South Carolina, New Mexico and California essentially split 50-50 between the two teams. Furthermore if these results were reflected in a Presidential election there would currently be no winner in the Electoral College. The Ravens with a lower percentage of the popular vote would take home 24-states and 223 “electors”. The leading Patriots meanwhile with 22-state wins would collect 196-votes with 119 remaining “too close to call”. Support outside of the country is more decisively in favor of New England (59%) probably due to their higher profile as a three-time Super Bowl champion in the decade. Not surprisingly the Patriots are most popular in New England. 90% of votes in Massachusetts, 89% in Maine, 88% in New Hampshire and 84% in Rhode Island believe the Pats will win Sunday. 81% of Maryland residents and 63% in Washington D.C. think it will be a Ravens victory meanwhile. Pennsylvania was narrowly split 51-49% in favor of Baltimore as well.

Which team will win the AFC Wild Card game in Cincinnati?

Total Votes: 40,320 (12:00 PM, Friday)

Cincinnati Bengals: 60%

New York Jets: 40%

Notes: The Jets may have crushed the Bengals in last week’s season finale but a clear majority of “Sports Nation” believes Cincinnati will come out on top of Saturday’s playoff contest. Six in ten nationwide are choosing the Bengals and the Jets receive majority support from none outside of New York’s tri-state area of New York state (74%), New Jersey (69%) and Connecticut (59%). The Bengals meanwhile generate support for their postseason chances from better than 70% of voters in Ohio (81%) and three of its neighbors; Kentucky (79%), West Virginia (77%) and Indiana (70%). Of the 2,645 fans who cast votes from outside the United States the Bengals were the pick by a similar 61-39% margin. Like the other AFC match up between New England and Baltimore the Bengals-Jets contest features a team with a 10-6 record hosting a 9-7 club. The NFC meanwhile has two 11-5 teams going head-to-head in Dallas this weekend and a 10-6 Cardinals team hosting an eleven-win Packers squad. All four games are close-calls according to sports betters. The Eagles as being favored to lose by a mere four-points are the biggest underdog of the first playoff round.

ESPN SportsNation: polling for fun if not for facts

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The intrigue and influence associated with opinion polling is not lost on the folks at ESPN – the worldwide leader in sports.

ESPN has been virtually bombarding webpage visitors with splashy, albeit highly unscientific poll questions for years now. Using the “Sports Nation” moniker to classify the range of opinions from fans across the country the ESPN Empire has adapted a new show based on the results to their varying poll questions. The show is hosted by television personality Michelle Beadle and ESPN satellite radio host Colin Cowherd.

Looking to create a show that is primarily the product of the fans, those who tune in not only can vote on poll questions but also propose topics through phone calls, email or Twitter. Taking a look at the SportsNation homepage you’ll see topics ranging from Michael Vick’s suspension and Tim Tebow’s celibacy to fan blogs, videos, reporting and of course poll questions.

Many web publications have inserted poll questionnaires in the past, often referred to as straw polls. ESPN took things a step further however by associating a map layout of the United States to show not only how many of the votes were going to a particular response, but in which states topics and answers were getting the most play. Consider it ESPN’s virtual electoral map of sorts.

It’s fun, it’s flashy and it’s interactive. It’s also as previously stated, highly unscientific. First off according to ESPN.com’s very own press kit 94% of its registered users are male. While its probably unfair to assume that the percentage off all ESPN.com visitors are also male by at such a high clip, it’s equally far fetched to believe that female sports fans by the numbers are being equally represented by SportsNation.

ESPN online polls do not weigh their samples either meaning the series of important demographic and ideological factors obtained by responsible scientific polls are tossed out the window. Thirdly there are unbalanced sample sizes from state-to-state and a varying number of total responses from one poll to the next. More general questions from popular sports such as, “Which team do you think will win the Super Bowl?” will naturally generate more votes than a question on rule changes in professional lacrosse. At the state level more Pennsylvanians for instance are likely to chime in on a topic that includes an athlete or team, say Sydney Crosby or the Eagles, from its own backyard than ones that do not.

It could be said that this is no different of course than the number of those who vote in Presidential elections as opposed to the substantially lesser turnout for midterms.

One question on ESPN’s SportsNation home page asks fans what they think the current state of NASCAR is? Four possible responses (excellent, good, acceptable, troubled) follow an article written about the sport’s lackluster appeal of late. For those undecided or influenced voters the story could create a push-poll tendency that would take an otherwise “acceptable” response to “troubled”, or “excellent” response to merely “good”, and so forth.

The poll had 17,395 responses as of noon this Saturday. By a plurality 47% chose “troubled” as the best way to define the current state of NASCAR racing. 27% were inclined to vote it as being “acceptable”, 19% for “good” and just 7% for “excellent”. While 17,395 appear quite large for a sample, from one state to the next the totals vary considerably. 1,622 Californians voted for instance against just a total of fifteen from the least populated state of Wyoming.

Not surprisingly perceptions of NASCAR generally did best in the Deep South where the sport is most popular. 38% of the 192 voters in Alabama said the sport was in “good” shape – the only state issuing a plurality of positive responses. Northeastern and western states where NASCAR is not generally as popular received harsher treatment by and large with most states having a majority of voters considering it to be “troubled”.

Just as in any poll odd questions will also generate odd responses. Here’s one of nearly 17,000 votes asking SportsNation viewers if they think the Pittsburgh Pirates are “bad” for baseball. Terms like “bad” are incredibly ambiguous for starters and made even more roundabout by the two choices given to online voters. Question one says vote “yes” if you think they aren’t trying to win, whereas question two says vote “no” if you agree they have a plan to build. 54% of responders voted “yes”, but does this mean they really think the Pirates are bad for baseball or that they just agree with the answer selection that the team doesn’t seem to be trying their hardest to win games? Where are those voters who think the Pirates aren't bad for baseball but also aren't really trying to win accounted for?

Fortunately no one with more than a pedestrian understanding of opinion polling is going to place much stock in the straw polls of ESPN or the top-line results from SportsNation. In the meantime the ESPN polls are fun and noteworthy for the massive amount of responses they receive, the state-by-state breakdowns they show and the often-amusing questions they ask. So enjoy, just don’t look into it.