As MacDailyNews reported this weekend (please see related articles below), Aliso Viejo, CA-based Net Applications announced November 2007 Operating System (and Browser) usage stats. With a new, enhanced marketshare site, Net Applications is now able to analyze global marketshare trends in much greater depth.
Net Applications now tracks more trends, summarizes OS versions better, and are now able to view market share by continent, country and even by state/province. Their new Mac OS usage map for the US provided “an immediate visual impact,” Net Applications ask in their December 1st Newsletter.
Net Applications writes, “Higher percentage Mac usage states almost perfectly match up with states that typically vote for Democrats. So, do Democrats prefer Macs? The correlation is striking.”
2004 US presidential election results by state:
(red=Republican, blue=Democrat)
2004 US presidential election results by county:
(red=Republican, blue=Democrat)
Meanwhile, the Mac continues to gain ground in Net Applications measurements of online share. November 2007 usage statistics show that globally, 6.8% of all computers online are Macs. That is the highest percentage Net Applications has seen to date.
More info via Net Applications’ report – “Democrats Vote for the Mac?” – here.
MacDailyNews Note: For what it’s worth:
Apple’s U.S. Retail Store Locations:
Also, via Wikipedia:
Prior to the 2000 presidential election, there was no universally recognized color scheme to represent political parties in the USA. The practice of using colors to represent parties on electoral maps dates back at least as far as the 1950s, when such a format was employed within the Hammond series of historical atlases. Color-based schemes became more widespread with the adoption of color television in the 1960s and nearly ubiquitous with the advent of color in newspapers. A three-color scheme — red, white and blue, the colors of the U.S. flag — makes sense, and the third color, white, is useful in depicting maps showing states that are “undecided” in the polls and in election-night television coverage.
Early on, the most common—though again, not universal—color scheme was to use red for Democrats and blue for Republicans. This was the color scheme employed by NBC—David Brinkley famously referred to the 1984 map showing Reagan’s 49-state landslide as a “sea of blue”, but this color scheme was also employed by most newsmagazines. CBS during this same period, however, used the opposite scheme—blue for Democrats, red for Republicans. ABC was less consistent than its elder network brothers; in at least two presidential elections during this time before the emergence of cable news outlets, ABC used yellow for one major party and blue for the other. As late as 1996, there was still no universal association of one color with one party. If anything, the majority of outlets in 1996 were using blue for the GOP and red for the Democrats.[citation needed]
But in 2000, for the first time, all major electronic media outlets used the same colors for each party: Red for Republicans, blue for Democrats. Partly as a result of this near-universal color-coding, the terms Red States and Blue States entered popular usage in the weeks following the 2000 presidential election…
The choice of colors in this divide is counter-intuitive to many international observers, as throughout the world, red is commonly the designated color for parties representing labor, socialist, and/or liberal interests, which in the United States would be more closely correlated with the Democratic Party. Similarly, blue is used in these countries to depict conservative parties which in the case of the United States would be a color more suitable for the Republicans.
More here.
Rudy2008,
You’re right, that sure is a lot of red! Too bad your home state is the wrong color!
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http://www.johnmccain.com/
Interesting that from the onset of color TV and through the Reagan days the Republicans were identified on these maps as blue. Somewhere during the Clinton days the main-stream media decided they wanted the Democrats to be blue. They now play if off as always being the way it is now.
Interesting that from the onset of color TV and through the Reagan days the Republicans were identified on these maps as blue. Somewhere during the Clinton days the main-stream media decided they wanted the Democrats to be blue. They now play if off as always being the way it is now.
Interesting that from the onset of color TV and through the Reagan days the Republicans were identified on these maps as blue. Somewhere during the Clinton days the main-stream media decided they wanted the Democrats to be blue. They now play if off as always being the way it is now.
Interesting that from the onset of color TV and through the Reagan days the Republicans were identified on these maps as blue. Somewhere during the Clinton days the main-stream media decided they wanted the Democrats to be blue. They now play if off as always being the way it is now.
Interesting that from the onset of color TV and through the Reagan days the Republicans were identified on these maps as blue. Somewhere during the Clinton days the main-stream media decided they wanted the Democrats to be blue. They now play if off as always being the way it is now.
Mac users tend to respect themselves more.
PC users will buy something that makes them waste endless effort until they give up on getting half the features to work, but then tell themselves that at least they saved $100 by not getting a mac. (Often ignoring the extra stuff they had to buy.)
Mac users take a broader view of the situation. We understand that their time is valuable, and a machine that just works means more time doing your job or raising your kids.
This broader view view of life is also correlated with wealth, and perhaps seeing through some of the political stunts that politicians pull.
Short view: We lowered taxes!
Broader view: Never mind that 6x the money you saved on taxes went into gas prices, as long as the government goes into debt everything is fine!)
Isn’t it strange that the younger you are the more you rely on parents and the state to take care of you. So you vote for the liberal agenda.
The older you get the less you enjoy paying everybody else’s bills so you vote for the conservative agenda.
I wonder why that is? I think that if we taxed the young more, they would smarten up sooner.
So it looks like Vermont and Hawaii have the highest Mac marketshare. I would have never guessed either..
As far as the political correlation, I’d say it’s complete rubbish. It has much more to do with income level and education.
Five pages?
I’ll look forward to calling Towertone various slurs, including “racist”, “fascist”, “stupid American”, etc. etc.. And it’s not even my country!
I am most of my family are Conservative Republicans.
We are also smart enough to all have Macs, one per person. (I’m not counting iPods, etc.)
Income plays a big role but level of intelligence plays a bigger role. But its not always a hard and fast rule and there are always exceptions. Look at George Bush, he has money and uses a Mac.
Of course they do!!! It makes them more efficient at taxing and spending us to death.
Well, duh. While there’s merit to the argument that the figures reflect population density I don’t think there’s any doubt that Mac users as a whole have more liberal political values than PC users as a whole.
Knee-jerk insistence that there couldn’t be a political component reminds me a lot of those tech columnists who still keep insisting that there are no real usability differences between the mac and pc.
Just because you want it to be true, doesn’t mean it is.
BTW, Rush Limbaugh uses a Mac..
This doesn’t jibe with the recent Gallup poll, that Republicans find themselves with better mental health than do Democrats:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/102943/Republicans-Report-Much-Better-Mental-Health-Than-Others.aspx
But that can’t be if they are Windows users. Discuss.
@Big Al
“The older you get the less you enjoy paying everybody else’s bills so you vote for the conservative agenda.”
Your a fscking idiot Big Al. 12 Billion a month for Bush’s war on a nation that had nothing to do with 9-11, lack of oversight on financial institutions so the U.S. economy and middle class retirements get flushed with sub-prime loans, and it is the the rich that get tax breaks and the middle class that gets stuck with the tax bill. The “failed conservative agenda” is what you mean.
Hey- someone had to end these courteous comments.
@ Smith,
“Maybe the Republican in me likes macs because they save me money and…”
Republicans and saving money has been a misnomer since Regan was in office. Do you realize that Bush has spent more of the taxpayers money than ALL presidents combined in history? Most of it going to the illegal occupation of Iraq. Did you know that Clinton actually had balanced the budget during his term?
Do Democrats prefer Apple Macs?
Although there are some correlations, there isn’t enough to justify that hypnosis based upon the limited presented data.
For instance the people living in those highlighted areas tend to have more disposable income and/or more technologically oriented.
I saw Al Gores Movie, It the film, his powerbook was always visible or in his hand most of the time.
( I think it was a PowerBook since I didn’t see the iSight Camera, and it was plugged into the old power cord )
I’m in Connecticut, and a student. My college has is 95% PC but the do have about 20 New iMacs.
And when I was in Florida,up to 9th grade, every computer was all Mac. My old highschool there only had like 10 PC’s in the media center, and nobody used them cause they were always infected and slow.
As Beryllium said first above this is likely nothing to do with political affiliation. The Mac usage map and the political party preference map are the result of the same underlying cause, which is *education*.
Areas of smart, educated, sophisticated people both use Macs and vote Democrat. Areas of dumb-ass country folk who believe everything they hear on the “TeeVee,” … vote Republican and use Windows.
It’s about IQ and sophistication only.
I don’t understand what this has to do with politics.
If you instead did a gradient map based on Gross State Product (GSP) per capita, it would probably match up even better with the Mac share map.
Clearly people in more developed (economically, and almost surely technologically as well) states prefer Mac. Is this a big surprise?
Going forward, which group of states do you think is a better indicator of technology trends, California, New York, Massachusetts, and Washington (where Mac OS is relatively strong), or Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia (where Mac OS is relatively weak)?
I think that it correlates more with education and income.
Grandpa,
If I’m a “fscking idiot,” but at least know how to properly use “you’re,” then you must be really bad off.