It’s probably no secret that I like to run polling projects, as a means of crowdsourcing various questions. From time to time, I’ll run posts that include polls for all 30 teams, and as soon as those posts get published I can’t wait to get a chance to analyze the data. It’s fun to see what the data says about the questions being directly asked, but that’s not the only use. We can also examine demographics!

In some polling posts, you’re free to participate however much you want. In others, though, I ask you to self-identify as a fan of a specific team, or of specific teams. For example, in a polling post about which teams might beat the projections, I’m fine with everyone voting for everyone. But when it comes to, say, fan excitement ratings, then I’m just looking for you to vote about your own favorite team. Very obviously, I can’t actually control how you vote, but the numbers show that you all do a pretty good job of playing along.

So with that being said — here’s a small meta-analysis. I looked at the numbers from all of my polling projects in which you were expected to vote for just one or two teams. This only goes back a couple years, but by looking at participation, we can see where the audience loyalties are. Which fan bases are over- or under-represented around these parts? Wonder no more!

It’s important to note, again, this covers just a couple of years. Within those years, the Blue Jays have been successful, and the Cubs have been wildly successful, so, yeah, that sort of makes sense. But the Cubs have had the highest turnout, followed by the Jays, followed by a massive gap until you get to the Red Sox. They might as well be even with the Mariners. At the left are the fans who’ve been around and most eager to participate in polling projects.

On the right, the opposite of that. One of every 54 participants has identified as a fan of the Rockies. One of every 53 participants has identified as a fan of the Padres. The teams over there mostly aren’t very good, and a lack of success is going to depress online reading and engaging, but I bet the lowest teams aren’t surprising. I’ve mentioned before that certain teams just don’t seem to have strong Internet communities, at least as far as overlapping with FanGraphs goes. I know there are Rockies fans, but they can be difficult to reach.

I don’t have anything else. I just got the idea to create a little bar chart. As you were!