Singer Marilyn Manson performs in Berlin, Germany.
It's been said that independent voters are going to decide November's election. If that's the case, maybe Barack Obama and Mitt Romney should be spending some more time wooing voters at heavy metal concerts. According to a new joint analysis of Americans' music habits and political beliefs, people who listen to metal bands are most likely to be independent voters.
The Echo Nest, a company that analyzes online music plays for companies such as Spotify, MTV, and several record companies, compared artist plays with self-professed political leanings (culled from Facebook and other social networks) to determine if there was a correlation between artist and political leanings. The results aren't terribly shocking: Fans of country artists are most commonly Republican, while Madonna, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna top the Democratic list.
According to the analysis, it was impossible to predict the political leanings of heavy metal fans. Marilyn Manson, Pantera, Alice in Chains, and three other heavy metal bands are among the top 10 artists with the "highest confusion."
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Perhaps not surprisingly, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Johnny Cash also make the list because they're three artists that are almost universally liked.
"The Beatles are up there because they're the most popular band in the world. It doesn't tell you much," says Brian Whitman, CTO of The Echo Nest. "But then there's these heavy metal and death metal bands, and there's two kinds of people who like that kind of music," he says, adding metal fans are usually people who are either politically independent or apathetic.
Whitman admits the project was mostly for fun, and it's hard to make any predictions based on the data, especially because the company wasn't able to determine the age (though all were 13 or older) or voting status of several million online music streamers analyzed.
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That means Mitt Romney can breathe a sigh of relief—people who listen to the current Top 10 songs on the Billboard charts skew overwhelmingly Democrat. Too bad for Obama, we don't think he'll be getting too many votes from the "Call Me Maybe" crowd.
Top 10 "Republican" Artists
Kenny Chesney
George Strait
Reba McEntire
Tim McGraw
Jason Aldean
Blake Shelton
Shania Twain
Kelly Clarkson
Pink Floyd
Elvis Presley
Top 10 "Democrat" Artists
Rihanna
Jay-Z
Madonna
Lady Gaga
Katy Perry
Snoop Dogg
Chris Brown
Usher
Eminem
Bob Marley
Top 10 "Hardest to Predict"
The Beatles
Marilyn Manson
The Rolling Stones
Johnny Cash
Pantera
Alice in Chains
Paradise Lost
Moonspell
Fleetwood Mac
Tiamat
Jason Koebler is a science and technology reporter for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at jkoebler@usnews.com
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