Porn in the USA: Conservatives Use More Pornography Than Liberals

By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Here's a story that gave me a chuckle and might make some folks' blood boil. Everyone knows porn sales are by far the biggest online money-makers. What I've never known, before this article anyway, is what types of people buy the lion's share of pornography sold online. Granted, the researcher's conclusion can be poked full of holes. And it's reasonable to ask why would anyone want to spend time—lots of time—figuring out whether liberals or conservatives buy more pornography?

Well, someone at Harvard "B" school found the pursuit to be time well spent, and guess what he found out?

After controlling for differences in broadband internet access between states - online porn tends to be a bandwidth hog - and adjusting for population, he found a relatively small difference between states with the most adult purchases and those with the fewest.

The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. "The differences here are not so stark," [Benjamin] Edelman [of Harvard Business School] says.

Number 10 on the list was West Virginia at 2.94 subscriptions per 1000, while number 41, Michigan, averaged 2.32.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election - Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

So Edelman concludes more pornography is purchased online in red states and conservatives are bigger consumers than liberals. I guess that means something to somebody. Ah, the frivolities of the Internet.

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