Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
In an earlier post this weekend, The Logo discussed how, on a per capita basis, Ricochet attracts more visitors from blue states than from red. That discovery led us to look at how we ranked among cities -- not major metropolitan areas, but the municipalities themselves.
As with the states, the biggest cities send us the most visitors. New York (defined, curiously, as Manhattan and Brooklyn; Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island are counted separately) is first at about 18,000 unique visitors. Much smaller but politically-driven Washington, D.C. is second. Nothing too surprising.
Cities that Send Ricochet the Most Visitors
- New York
- Washington, DC
- Los Angeles
- Chicago
- Houston
- San Francisco
- Denver
- Minneapolis
- Dallas
- Atlanta
- Seattle
- Austin
- Arlington
- San Diego
- Madison
- London
- Phoenix
- Philadelphia
- Toronto
- Portland, OR
When we change this to a per capita ranking (see notes for additional details), here's what we find:
Places that Send Ricochet the Most Visitors per Capita
- Hopkins, MN
- Clarksburg, WV
- Charlottesville, VA
- State College, PA
- Decatur, GA
- Naples, FL
- Midvale, UT
- Princeton, NJ
- Beverly Hills
- Morgantown, WV
- Winter Park, FL
- West Chester, PA
- Ithaca, NY
- Spring, TX
- DC Metro
- Culver City, CA
- Newport, RI
- Minneapolis
- Madison, WI
- Cambridge, MA
First of all, let's hear it for Hopkins, MN and Clarksburg, WV! We don't really know why they're at the top of our leader boards, but we're interested in finding out. About 15% of the top 100 towns come from places like Hopkins and Clarksburg. Then we notice a few other things:
Urban Areas
The DC metro area and Minneapolis grace our top twenty. Others include Atlanta (#30), Denver (#40), Seattle (#54), San Francisco (#56), St. Louis (#67), and New York City (#76).
Suburbs, Enclaves, or Commuter Towns Attached to Blue Metro Areas
Beverly Hills (#9); Lynnwood, WA (# 22); Smyrna, GA (#23); La Jolla, CA (#25), Redmond, WA (#28), Brentwood, TN (#37), and Germantown, TN (#38) are examples of towns where a lot of conservatives live -- probably quietly -- under the influence of a large, blue metro area. Hopkins, MN (#1) probably fits in this category as well.
And then there's West Hollywood (#27), which... isn't what we expected. But we're happy to have you!
College Towns
About one third of our top 100 consists of what are generally considered to be college towns. State capitals like Madison, Richmond, and Austin may not fit perfectly into this bucket, but they're included here anyway with that caveat. Here's a list of those within our top 100:
| 3 | Charlottesville, VA | Univ. of VA |
| 4 | State College, PA | Penn State |
| 5 | Decatur, GA | Emory U. |
| 8 | Princeton, NJ | Princeton |
| 10 | Morgantown, WV | West Virginia Univ. |
| 13 | Ithaca, NY | Cornell |
| 19 | Madison, WI | Univ. of Wisconsin |
| 20 | Cambridge, MA | Harvard, MIT |
| 21 | Greenville, SC | Bob Jones, Furman |
| 26 | Palo Alto, CA | Stanford |
| 30 | Chapel Hill, NC | Univ. of North Carolina |
| 33 | Newark, DE | Univ. of Delaware |
| 36 | Ann Arbor, MI | Univ. of Michigan |
| 45 | San Luis Obispo | Cal Poly |
| 48 | Annapolis, MD | U.S. Naval Academy, St. John's |
| 51 | West Lafayette | Purdue Univ. |
| 60 | Burlington, VT | Univ. of Vermont |
| 62 | Knoxville, TN | Univ. of Tennessee |
| 65 | Bloomington, IN | Univ. of Indiana |
| 70 | Berkeley, CA | Univ. of California |
| 72 | Tempe, AZ | Arizona State |
| 79 | Austin, TX | Univ. of Texas |
| 80 | Columbia, SC | Univ. of South Carolina |
| 81 | Moscow, ID | Univ. of Idaho |
| 86 | Amherst, MA | Amherst College, UMass |
| 88 | Oxford, MS | Ole Miss Univ. |
| 92 | Evanston, IL | Northwestern |
| 93 | Boulder, CO | Univ. of Colorado |
| 95 | Columbia, MO | Univ. of Missouri |
| 99 | Gainesville, FL | Univ. of Florida |
| 100 | Corvallis, OR | Oregon State Univ. |
Although it's hard to pigeonhole everyone, we're surprised at how much resonance Ricochet seems to have in places with a strong left/progressive influence: college towns and metro areas chief among them. From our personal experience, we've noticed that conservatives feel ideologically isolated when substantially outnumbered by noisy, self-congratulatory leftists. It seems as if we're alone, even though we really aren't, and perhaps that's what leads us to online communities like Ricochet.
So you're more likely to find someone reading Ricochet in Austin (#79) than in Dallas (#125), in Amherst (#86) than in Boston (#145), or in Santa Cruz (#139) than in San Diego (#203).
In other words, red dots in blue blobs.
Notes:
- Only towns of 15,000 or more were included, because there were too many odd categorization artifacts otherwise.
- The only major metropolitan area we included was for DC, and that's because the individual suburbs (Reston, Arlington, Alexandria, etc.), along with DC itself, were so consistently high in our rankings. All other cities were just the municipalities proper.
- Rural areas are reported by county. Unincorporated parts of Jefferson County (TN), Hennepin County (MN), and Shelby County (TN) were the only rural areas to make the top 500, but they didn't crack the top 100.
- The analysis was based on unique visitors over an approximately three-month period starting in January 2011.
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Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
anon_academic: Logo,
If you want to use your admin rights to e-mail me, we can discuss some analyses.For instance, I bet diamonds to donuts that a scatterplot of per/capita to raw pop would be cone-shaped · May 8 at 3:52pm
Thank you, anon. Here's a scatterplot for a trimmed subset of the 337 data points we looked at. The y-axis is population, cut off at 2 million; the x-axis is UVs per capita, cut off at 10,000 per million. If we don't cut off the axes, it looks like a hyperbola.
Jul '10
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
Hay, Logo, how many hours a day do I spend Here at Ricochet?
WAIT!!! Don't tell Me..... I don't want to know.
Apr '11
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
This is great stuff, The Logo, and it dovetails with a topic that's been percolating in my head for awhile (alas, it never quite percolated all the way onto the Member Feed): how about providing a comprehensive "State of the Site" report, a year and a half in? I am so curious about the shadowy inner workings of the Ricochet Empire: how many members are there? What percentage are monthlies vs. annuals? What percentage have never posted? Which members post the most? Who has had the most conversations buzzed up to the Main Feed? What additional features/capabilities are in the works? What do you wish you had done differently in creating the site and the business model? What is working out better than anyone expected? Are you making any money?
Basically, what I am trying to say here is that I am super-nosy.
Edited on May 9, 2011 at 4:22amRe: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
Charlotte Reineck: This is great stuff, The Logo, and it dovetails with a topic that's been percolating in my head for awhile (alas, it never quite percolated all the way onto the Member Feed): how about providing a comprehensive "State of the Site" report, a year and a half in? I am so curious about the shadowy inner workings of the Ricochet Empire: how many members are there? What percentage are monthlies vs. annuals? What percentage have never posted? Which members post the most? Who has had the most conversations buzzed up to the Main Feed? What additional features/capabilities are in the works? What do you wish you had done differently in creating the site and the business model? What is working out better than anyone expected? Are you making any money?
Basically, what I am trying to say here is that I am super-nosy. · May 8 at 7:14pm
Edited on May 08 at 07:22 pm
You're not from MoveOn.org, are you?
The first thing I'll reveal is that we consider our birth date to be May 24, 2010, which is when the site went live (and very, very quietly). We had the podcasts going at the beginning of 2010, though, so that might be considered our first sign of pregnancy.
Edited on May 9, 2011 at 6:19amApr '11
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
Anon-academic: I would be very interested in your analysis if you have the opportunity to see the data.
Apr '11
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
Hey!
Yup, that's when I was measuring from. Most of us around here are pro-life.
May '10
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
Hopkins, MN was the home of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Information Club. This is clearly an indication that there's a huge market for getting Mike Nelson on a podcast.
Arizona State is also known as Playboy U. As PJ O'Rourke says, the sign of a winning political movement is the number of hot chicks attached to it, so we need to bump up Tempe in the rankings. I'll get to work on that.
Step One: Replace Machiavelli potrait with picture of my dog. They love that.
Edited on May 9, 2011 at 2:37pmDec '10
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
Are there any plans in the works for a Ricochet Meet&Greet system? Now that we know where everyone lives, we may as well meet up.
I'd be more than happy to meet anyone in the DC area for coffee/drinks/dinner anytime. Perhaps we can meet at a local Starbucks. For the price of a Grande Latte, we could enjoy fine conversation!
Mar '11
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
I am not surprised to not see my city and state, Las Vegas, NV, near the top in any of these lists. My experience with conservatives/Republicans in this state is that they are wishy-washy and cannot be bothered to read any insightful and informational material. It's all about the "juice" to them, i.e. Who can get me what I want? That's why a lot of them voted for Harry Reid back in November. It's also why an empty suit like Sharron Angle can rise to Republican nominee for Senator. I guess it also doesn't help that NV has one of the lowest % of college-educated people.
In addition, I was hoping to see my conservative alma mater, Grove City College, on the college list but I think the town and the school are too small for the survey. But, Hillsdale is not on there either, probably for the same reason.
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
Michael Horn: Are there any plans in the works for a Ricochet Meet&Greet system? Now that we know where everyone lives, we may as well meet up.
I'd be more than happy to meet anyone in the DC area for coffee/drinks/dinner anytime. Perhaps we can meet at a local Starbucks. For the price of a Grande Latte, we could enjoy fine conversation! · May 9 at 7:56am
There is. Private messaging is high in our queue, although we need to follow that up with a more standard way of identifying who lives where. Our constraints are that (a) Members should be completely anonymous if they want to be, and that includes location; and, (b) Members may want to reveal who they are only to other Members.
From our logs, we can tell that there are tens of thousands of people in the DC area who have stopped by Ricochet recently. At the very least, it suggests a Rico Soirée, along with the long promised one in Minneapolis.
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
The Logo looked specifically at Grove City, but it was surprisingly far down in the per capita rankings, unlike Hillsdale which was really high. Hillsdale didn't make the population cut off, but Grove City has over 31,000 inhabitants, so it would have been fine -- we just don't seem so popular there.
Perhaps you share The Logo's reaction when he compared the ranking of his undergraduate alma mater (low), with that of its arch rival (high): how could this be?
Nov '10
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
You're not alone. I'm up in Cedar Park.*
Personally, I love Austin culture; it's just weird enough to be interesting, but deep down inside we're still Texas, so it doesn't get too ridiculous. You can lament that we have Leslie** to laugh at, but I prefer to take comfort in the fact that we still laugh at him.
*A suburb of Austin.
**A homeless transvestite who ran for mayor no less than three times.
Aug '10
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
The main thing I wanted to try was the scatterplot which The Logo posted. It's pretty much what I'd expected in terms of outliers being driven by small sample size.
The other things I'd be interested in (though honestly, I'm not sure if I could do them within the time I can afford to devote to it) would be:
a) redo the scatterplot based on a lower bound confidence interval for usage/capita as an attempt to control for the noise factor.
b) estimate usage/capita as a quadratic (ie, x + x^2) function of the Obama vote. if the Logo's speculation of that Ricochet is a "refuge" for blue state conservatives is correct, then we should see a u-shaped effect, with usage peaking somewhere around the 60% mark. (DC is obviously an outlier, but I suspect the Logo is right in general). (The regression is easy, the hard part would be merging in election data).
Mar '11
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
The Logo
The Logo looked specifically at Grove City, but it was surprisingly far down in the per capita rankings, unlike Hillsdale which was really high. Hillsdale didn't make the population cut off, but Grove City has over 31,000 inhabitants, so it would have been fine -- we just don't seem so popular there.
Perhaps you share The Logo's reaction when he compared the ranking of his undergraduate alma mater (low), with that of its arch rival (high): how could this be? · May 9 at 9:48am
Well then, Mr. Logo, I stand corrected. I am surprised as well it was so far down the list. But 31,000 inhabitants? I guess that town has blown up since I was there 20 years ago. Wow.
Jun '10
Re: Where You Come From, Part 2: Red Dots in Blue Blobs?
Charlotte Reineck: This is great stuff, The Logo, and it dovetails with a topic that's been percolating in my head for awhile (alas, it never quite percolated all the way onto the Member Feed): how about providing a comprehensive "State of the Site" report, a year and a half in? I am so curious about the shadowy inner workings of the Ricochet Empire: how many members are there? What percentage are monthlies vs. annuals? What percentage have never posted? Which members post the most? Who has had the most conversations buzzed up to the Main Feed? What additional features/capabilities are in the works? What do you wish you had done differently in creating the site and the business model? What is working out better than anyone expected? Are you making any money?
Basically, what I am trying to say here is that I am super-nosy. · May 8 at 7:14pm
Edited on May 08 at 07:22 pm
I think you will have to wait until the prospectus for the IPO before you see most of that. I hope a nice block is set aside for Members to buy.