Posted by
ShiningCity on Monday, November 03, 2008 11:40:01 PM
City, S (Colorado Springs, CO) and Carter, J (Ft. Worth, TX)
"McMILF 2008" is a real campaign bumper sticker (get yours
here).
Background: Placement of stickers on one's car to announce one's opinion is common in (and
relatively unique to) America. Where to affix such stickers is a topic of much conversation, and advice is routinely disseminated on the internet, specifically in car forums (where experts discuss how to preserve the integrity of one's vehicle). Most often, these
car experts advise to specifically avoid placment of stickers on paint because the sticker prevents the natural fading of the paint, such that, when removed, the paint underneath the sticker remains darker than surrounding paint. In spite of such ubiquitous advice, the authors have observed that the tail-ends of many vehicles are decorated with bumper stickers. The authors (and
others) hypothesized that when opinions are affixed to the tail-end of a vehicle, the opinion is most often liberal. And these liberal opinions, expressed in the form of stickers, are most commonly affixed to the vehicle's
paint. The authors hypothesized that fellow conservatives do not affix stickers to paint as often, or with as much fervor (specifically, number of stickers) as liberals. The authors designed a study to specifically address which ideas are most often affixed to the paint and to the glass of automobiles.
Methods: A randomized study was designed to determine whether a trend exists in where democrats/liberals and republicans/conservatives place bumper stickers with respect to either application on paint/bumper or on glass. From the time period of August 28 through November 1, the authors randomly photographed the placement of 71 politically-active bumper stickers using either a cell phone, a Blackberry smart phone, or a digital camera. To prevent location bias, one author photographed in Texas, while the other photographed in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. All vehicles that obviously expressed an idea via affixed stickers were included as they were encountered, except for the following exclusions: vehicles with stickers that did not clearly identify a political persuasion (e.g. stickers expressing military support); moving vehicles that placed the photographer at risk for accident; and, vehicles that were parked in such a way as to endanger the photographer if (s)he was caught photographing the vehicle (e.g. owner of car is seen walking directly to car and looking at author with foreboding). The study continued until at least 30 stickers in each ideologic category were photographed or through November 3, 2008, whichever came first.
The most obvious and commonly-photographed stickers that identified a political persuasion were stickers endorsing a particular presidential candidate: Barack Obama and John McCain. For purposes of this study, Obama stickers were categorized to represent "liberal/democrat" ideology, and McCain stickers were categorized to represent "conservative/republican [or GOP]" ideology. When political candidates were endorsed via a sticker, and these candidates could be definitively assigned a political platform (i.e. Doug Lamborne, R), then the stickers were also included and assigned an ideologic category. Other bumper stickers were photographed when the sticker ideas represented classic liberalism (those most commonly encountered were stickers advocating environmental extremism or pro-choice positions). The same was not done with conservative ideas because we did not encounter any vehicles with conservative stickers without a clear candidate endorsement.
Results: The photographs were scrutinized for duplication using both vehicle description (including other affixed stickers) and license plate, if available. No duplicated photos were included in the analysis. The vehicles were assigned to one of these five descriptive categories depending on sticker ideology: Restrained on Glass [RG] (conservative/republican ideals on windows), Moderate on Paint [MP] (conservative/republican ideals on paint or bumper), Moderate on Glass [MG] (liberal/democrat ideals on windows), Radical on Paint [RP] (liberal/democrat ideals on paint), and Other (stickers of a clear ideology but unable to be included in one of former categories). If the vehicle contained stickers on both the paint and the glass, the vehicle was defaulted into the paint category.
Table 1: Vehicles assigned to Categories. To prevent identification, license plates were listed with final numerical replaced with "*"
Table 2: Analysis of Data
|
Glass |
Bumper/Paint
|
Total |
| Conservative/GOP ideas |
26 (81%) |
6 (19%) |
32 |
| Liberal/Democrat ideas |
7 (18%) |
32 (82%) |
39 |
| Total # Stickers Observed |
33 (46%) |
38 (54%) |
71 |
Representative vehicles of each category
Figures 1 and 2: Restrained on Glass (RG [GOP on window])
Figure 2
Figure 3: Moderate on Paint (MP [GOP on paint/bumper])
Figure 4: Moderate on Glass (MG [Lib on window])
Figures 5-12: Radical on Paint (RP [Lib on paint/bumper])
Figure 6
Figure 7 (The author's car. See
story for details)
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12 (notice wording of sticker on paint: "Republicans for Obama")
Figure 13 : "Other" category. Car that could not be placed in either category because vehicle contained both Obama and McCain stickers adjacent to each other on the paint
Figure 14 (Close-up of Stickers from Figure 13)
Conclusions:
1. Both democrats & republicans, liberals & conservatives, place political bumper stickers on their automobiles.
2. The majority of democrats/liberals who affix political stickers to their automobiles affix them to the painted areas of their vehicles.
3. Corollary to #2: Liberals are more likely than conservatives to place numerous stickers on their vehicles, and specifically on vehicular paint.
4. The majority of republicans/conservatives who affix political stickers to their automobiles affix them to the windows of their vehicles.
5. The majority percentage of republicans who affix stickers to their windows is equivalent to the majority percentage of democrats who affix stickers to their paint. The minority percentage of republicans who affix stickers to their paint is equivalent to the minority percentage of democrats who affix stickers to their windows.
Editors' Notes:
I shall make one statement of disclaimer first, then give my views: Not all liberal views affixed to paint can be specifically linked with democrat voting behavior. We actually saw car with numerous vegetarian & animal rights stickers covering the painted bumper, but the owner suspended a McCain doll and a dog scarf that said "Canines for Mccain!" in the backseat rear window. Since the McCain doll was not suspended from a noose, I am assuming the driver is a McCain supporter. There were no Obama stickers on the vehicle.
The results of our study aren't surprising. Anecdotally, we have observed here at TH that democrats clutter their vehicles with stickers on the paint. Why they do this still remains a mystery to me; yet, we have identified that, as a fact, more democrats put stickers on the paint than do conservative counterparts. Here are some possibilities that I've considered to explain the "why" for this phenomenon:
1. Liberals refuse to subjugate their opinions to the lost value of their vehicles that occurs when they deface the property with a sticker on the paint.
2. In their zeal to say their opinion, liberals don't think things through enough to realize that the paint will be damaged by their sticker
3. Liberals don't think "outside the box." If the sticker says "bumper" on the marketing information, then they put it on the bumper--painted or not. It doesn't even enter their thought processes to place the sticker elsewhere.
3. Somewhere in Liberal Land (which I never visit), it is cool and expected to affix your stickers to paint--a type of hazing, if you will. It's expected by their friends that they will a) get stickers and b) put them on the paint.
Regarding the 18% minority, why do they behave such? Here are some possibilities:
1. The conservatives who put stickers on paint are actually Reagan Democrats.
2. The liberals who put stickers on glass are actually fiscal conservatives and social liberals.
3. 20% of the time, people are going to go against the grain of majority action. Maybe to stand out from the pack? It is quite interesting, however, that the numbers of majority and minority are identical.
OR
1. Liberals/Democrats are actually those carefree laid-back hippies who are given an auto (a type of welfare; meaning no sense of value), immediately place their opinion on the auto (via bumper sticker), grow up and get a job, then find out how detrimental said opinion is when using a Conservative system, such as selling said auto.
2. Liberals/Democrats are always waiting for the "solution" to all their problems. It's always a politician, someone else, who will solve their problems. "The next guy running for office will be 'the one,'" whereas, Conservatives understand that politicians work for them and are only temporary. A lib/dem will affix a sticker of their candidate permanently to their auto believing that they will finally be the solution (shortsighted), whereas Conservatives place a temporary sticker to their window warning the politician, "You can easily be replaced" (farsighted).
3. Lib/Dems are secretly trying to devalue all automobiles with their bumper stickers in order to fight "global warming."