Republicans Love Peyton Manning and Hate Tom Brady

Back during Super Bowl week, Public Policy Polling released some Super Bowl related polling data on the Friday before the game, and I didn’t see it at the time. [h/t: Sports Illustrated for bring it to my attention]. It’s a fairly lengthy document that has things broken down by various factors like gender, political party affiliation, and race when it comes to things like favorite teams.

There is also this interesting summation–and keep in mind this was done before the Peyton Manning story about the Tennessee trainer grew legs again, and seemed to spark all sorts of partisan views.

Peyton Manning was ranked #1 in popularity among Republican participants, with 20% identifying him as their favorite NFL quarterback. Only 1% of those that identified as Republicans, on the other hand, listed him as their least favorite quaterback. (Compare that to Tim Tebow, where 16% still list him as favorite but 6% as least favorite among Republican respondents, for a 10% gap). Manning’s status among Democrats doesn’t swing completely the other way (14% as favorite versus 15% as least favorite), but there is a noticeable difference in favorability based on party leaning.

Tom Brady, meanwhile, was not very popular across the board, but was particularly disliked among Republican respondents, where 39% listed him as the least favorite. That’s a 23% gap between favorite and least favorite among Republican respondents.

In other issues polled, I found it interesting that there was basically no party difference in questions about whether the person would or would not let their child play football. 65% of Democrats, 63% of Republicans, and 63% of Independents said they would, while 22%, 29%, and 17% respectively said they would not.

The issue of the Washington Redskins’ name, meanwhile, did show party distinction, though the support for a name change was in the minority across all groups. 29% of Democrats and 14% of Republicans support a name change, while 83% of Republicans (and 100% of those that separately identify as very conservative) oppose such a change.