Pinterest is dominated by Republicans, because obvs

While 80% of users are women, they tend to be wealthy, white and suburban

Well here’s an interesting factoid for your Tuesday afternoon: Pinterest users largely skew Republican. “What will I do with that information?” you ask. I DON’T KNOW. I JUST DELIVER THE GOODS. I CAN’T DO EVERYTHING.

The data comes from a poll released Tuesday by the Harvard Institute of Politics, which compiled responses based on education and race as well.

The data is interesting for a couple of reasons: 1) all of the other social networks included in the poll were either dominated by Democrats or were neck-and-neck (in the case of Facebook and Snapchat), 2) the vast majority of Pinterest users are women, who tend to vote Democrat, and 3) Pinterest is more popular among younger users, who tend to vote Democrat.

When respondents were asked about their party affiliations and the social networks they use, researchers found that 40% of Republicans have a Pinterest account compared to 32% of Democrats.

By comparison, 87% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats have Facebook accounts. Democrats are more active on Google+ and Twitter, with 52% of Democrats and 36% of Republicans saying they have a Google+ account, and 46% of Democrats and 38% of Republicans saying they have a Twitter account.

So first, there’s the obvious discrepancy here: Pinterest is dominated by women. Some 80% of users are women, to be specific. A remarkable one in three online women in the U.S. use Pinterest, and eMarketer estimates that the platform sees about 40 million monthly users. 

Women tend to vote Democrat. Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012 among women voters by a full 11 points—higher than most gender gaps in presidential races since 1980.

But, of course, not all women vote Democrat, just like not all women use Pinterest. While Pinterest users—like other social media users—tend to be young, more Pinterest users than Facebook, Twitter, or even Instagram users are white, suburban, and come from more affluent households. Indeed, more than one in four Internet users who come from households earning more than $75,000 a year or more use Pinterest, compared to one in five who use Twitter. Facebook and Twitter’s demographic makeups tend to be more even, with slightly more less affluent Internet users on Facebook than more affluent users (76% of those earning less than $30,000 a year, compared to 69% of those earning more than $75,000 a year).

Pinterest is also the only social network in the Pew study in which white Internet users outpaced black and Hispanic Internet users.

So it might be fair to typify Pinterest as a white, wealthy, suburban woman’s social network—which you might have already figured out when every time you went on the site, you were bombarded with pins featuring inspirational Christian quotes, or pins on how to decoupage whatever the hell people normally decoupage.  

Image source: nbcnews.com