In the final blog post following the release of its “Contemporary Music SuperStudy 2,” Coleman Insights provides a look at musical preferences based on political party lines. The information, which was not presented in the research firm’s April webinar, covered by Inside Radio here and here, shows that country music reigns supreme for panelists who have a positive opinion of President Donald Trump.
“An overwhelming 50% of their Top 100 titles are country songs,” President Warren Kurtzman writes in the Tuesday’s With Coleman blog post. “At 26%, pop is the only other genre achieving a double-digit share of the Top 100 contemporary songs with Trump fans.”
On the other side of the aisle, respondents who support presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden favor pop music, with the genre making up 38% of their Top 100 songs. Hip Hop/R&B is next at 33%. Only 10% of country music titles are included on lists of Biden fans.
Trump fans selected “Believer” by Imagine Dragons as their favorite among 2019’s most consumed songs, while Biden fans prefer Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You.” “Both of these titles finish among the top ten songs with both groups,” Kurtzman writes. “Furthermore, there are three other songs – “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi, “The Middle” by Zedd & Maren Morris and “Can’t Stop The Feeling” by Justin Timberlake – that are among the top ten songs with Trump and Biden fans.”
The one thing fans of both candidates can agree upon is their dislike of the song “Baby Shark” by Pinkfong. The song, which “was the least popular title overall among 2019’s most consumed songs, was also the least popular with both groups,” Kurtzman reveals.
Kurtzman clarified that for the study, “we regarded fans of Biden and Trump as those who had ‘very positive’ or ‘somewhat positive’ opinions of each.” Additionally, the survey was in the field from January through March 2020, prior to Biden becoming the presumptive Democratic candidate and before the COVID-19 pandemic came to American shores. “In our data, 41% of the respondents were Joe Biden fans; the corresponding figure for Donald Trump was 32%,” Kurtzman notes. Coleman Insights surveyed 1,000 respondents ages 12-54 in the U.S. and Canada for its musical look back at 2019.
Similar tastes were found among respondents based on their political leanings. “Among the 39% of respondents who describe themselves as ‘liberal’ or ‘moderate, who leans liberal,’ pop and Hip Hop/R&B titles make up a combined 68% of their Top 100 songs,” Kurtzman says. “Those who describe themselves as ‘conservative’ or ‘moderate, who leans conservative’ – a group that comprises 28% of the sample – have a strong appetite for country music, as 48% of their Top 100 titles are from this genre. Another 27% of their Top 100 consists of pop titles.”