The Pulse

It may be campaign season, but baseball starts in April. What about those Cubbies and the Pale Hose or the neighboring Red Birds? The Illinois Policy Survey, conducted this fall by the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University, showed that 86 percent of our state's citizens claim allegiance to a favorite ball club. Not surprisingly, the majority pick one of the two Chicago teams, but 14 percent root for the St. Louis Cardinals and 9 percent pick some other team (at 1.6 percent, the Los Angeles Dodgers are the most popular of the distant teams).

Although the White Sox had higher attendance figures this past year, Cub fans outnumber Sox followers by about two to one, 44 percent to 21 percent, according to the poll.

Baseball is no all-male pastime in Illinois. Women are about as likely as men to be fans. Only 15 percent of the women say they do not have a favorite team, compared to 12 percent of the men. But there is a small gender difference in the followers of the two local teams. Women comprise 55 percent of the Cub fans and 49 percent of the Sox following.

There is a regional difference in fan support. While the White Sox draw a majority of their fans from Cook County (actually 62 percent), the majority of Cub fans (52 percent) live outside the county. Both clubs draw about a quarter of their support from the collar counties (DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will). The biggest difference comes in support from the rest of downstate: It's the Cubbies with 29 percent of their fans downstate and the Sox with 9 percent. The greater exposure of the Cubs on a nationwide cable television station probably accounts for some of this difference.

We may not usually expect to see a correlation between politics and baseball, but the Illinois Policy Survey is, after all, a poll primarily about political issues in the state, so a little political analysis is in order. Besides, the authors are both political scientists as well as fans, but not of the same team, so this is obviously a balanced report.

It seems that the Cubs have more Republicans in their ranks than do the White Sox (33 percent to 28 percent), and the Sox have more liberals (29 percent compared to 21 percent of Cub fans). A full third of those Cubbie fans say they are politically conservative, but only about a fifth (22 percent) of Sox fans sit in the right field of politics.

Finally, there are some socioeconomic differences in the fan profiles for the two teams that defy stereotypic descriptions of Cub fans as upper-class yuppies and the Sox as the blue-collar team. The Cubs get 31 percent of their supporters from families earning more than $42,000 a year, but the Sox get 40 percent of their followers from this upper income group. There is also a slight tendency for Sox fans to be better educated than fans of the Cubs; 26 percent of the latter have a college degree, while 31 percent of Sox fans are college graduates. With the building of a new stadium and a resurgence in the standings, the Sox may be attracting the kinds of people who used to be automatic Cub fans.

One last note. Only 41 percent of the Cub fans have children under age 19, compared to 55 percent of Sox fans. (Cub fans are also slightly older with a median age of 41 years, compared to 39 for the Sox.) If baseball allegiance is passed on through generations, this could mean we will eventually see a shifting in the percentages of Illinoisans who follow each team.

NOTE: Neither author is a White Sox fan. One likes the Cubs, and the other, shudder, wears a red cap to the office.

Ellen M. Dran is a research associate at the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University, which has conducted its policy survey annually in Illinois since 1984. Matthew E. Wetstein is a research associate in the center.

32/January 1992/Illinois Issues