Quiz tests whether you can tell a Trump voter's fridge from a Biden voter's
Who has Mountain Dew and who has soy milk? Who has mayo and who has yogurt? The New York Times chills out with an online quiz.
- Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year" award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Sure, you can tell which presidential candidate someone prefers by their bumper stickers or yard signs, but can you tell from their condiments? On Tuesday, The New York Times tried to find out, publishing a photo quiz showing the inside of the refrigerators of people who'd revealed whether they were voting for President Donald Trump or Sen. Joe Biden.
It's easy to guess who someone with a “MAGA” hat or Biden-Harris tote voted for. But Cool Whip or loose eggs?
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 28, 2020
We wondered if it was possible to identify Trump and Biden voters based on what's in their refrigerators.
Take our quiz to see how you do 👇 https://t.co/dfqx7YpjWF
The newspaper teamed up with online survey platform Lucid and asked a representative sample of US residents to reveal who they're planning to vote for, and then to share a picture of the inside of their fridge. The quiz shows the fridge photos and lets readers guess whether the owner is a Biden or Trump voter. Hundreds of photos were submitted.
I tried guessing on 20 photos and correctly named the candidate 16 times, an 80 percent score. There's a tendency to lean heavily on stereotypes -- soy milk drinkers seem like they'd more likely be Biden voters -- but that's not always the case. Most quiz-takers struggled, the Times said. As of Wednesday, readers had made 4.3 million guesses and were right only 53 percent of the time, the Times said.
Some fridge photos did better than the others.
A fridge featuring a large bucket of KFC? Trump voter, and 89 percent guessed that correctly. (Trump famously posed with such a bucket while still a candidate in 2016.)
The fridge featuring a Krispy Kreme doughnut box, Imperial margarine and a case of Mountain Dew? Also belonged to a Trump voter, and 92 percent guessed that.
Fancier beverages made guessers choose Biden. Two fridges showing prominent containers of almond milk belonged to Biden voters, and 88 percent and 86 percent of guessers knew that.
But you can't always judge a voter by his or her nutrition decisions. A fridge featuring hot dogs, meatloaf and RC cola belonged to a Biden voter, even though 90 percent of those who guessed thought otherwise. And another one showing milk, yogurt and lettuce belonged to a Trump voter, though 90 percent thought it was a Biden voter's fridge.
"The current scores suggest that as a whole," the paper reported, "we can't distinguish people's politics from glances into their fridges much more reliably than if we just flipped a coin."