In the most unscientific way possible (but still better than Iowa).

While the 2020 presidential primary drags on, NBN is here to provide some light stereotyping of 2020 Democratic candidate supporters based on an entirely unscientific poll of Northwestern students. The results are taken from February 2020, and since then several candidates have withdrawn from the race.

Not surprisingly, half of respondents who identify most with the subculture “gamer” were #YangGang. Yang also failed to gather much support with women both in our poll (he’s at 6 percent) and nationally. On the other side of the gender spectrum, Warren got only 13 percent of male respondents’ votes compared to 43 percent of women — we’re sure it’s not because there’s “just something about her.” Like the languages Buttigieg claims he “speaks fluently,” his supporters are all over the place and would most likely have deserted their candidate at the polls. (Maybe that’s why he had to drop out.) Bernie’s supporters identified most with the subculture “hipster,” which suggests that his Brooklyn roots contribute to his “cool kid persona,” despite the fact that he started balding before most of his supporters were born. Ultimately, the predictions rang true. Northwestern is just as left-leaning as our respondents thought it would be: 71 percent went for Bernie or Warren.

We polled 91 students about their preferred candidates. These are the subcultures respondents identify with and the TV shows they like.

Bernie Sanders:

  • Gamer
  • Hipster
  • "Bojack Horseman"
  • "The Office"

Amy Klobuchar

  • Hipster
  • Vegan
  • "Black Mirror"

Pete Buttigieg

  • Normie
  • “Sex Education”
  • “How I Met Your Mother”

Joe Biden

  • Normie
  • Tik Tok Influencer
  • "Game of Thrones"

Andrew Yang

  • Gamer
  • South Park

Tom Steyer

  • Normie
  • "Lost"

Michael Bloomberg

  • Normie
  • "Amazing Race"

Elizabeth Warren

  • Vegan
  • VSCO Girl
  • "The West Wing"
  • "Gilmore Girls"

What social media platform do each candidate's supporters like the most?

Infographic by Maren Kranking

What stereotypes do you associate with Northwestern students and political candidates?

From students' write-in responses:

  • “Either Econ/PoliSci Neocons or lovely cool people who unfortunately don’t know Mike Bloomberg from Mike Pompeo”
  • “woke kids liking bernie and fratstars being closeted trump supporters”
  • “I keep seeing this one guy on tinder whose bio is “#bidenalltheway Biden 2020”
  • “I remember in one of my poli sci classes this one guy sitting behind me muttered ‘the only students who support Bernie are non poli sci majors’ and tbh accurate”