Cool New Map Shows Where Phillies Fans Live by ZIP Code
Using Facebook data, a new map from a New York Times-owned site details baseball fandom. Phillies Nation is huge!
Upshot, a new data-driven journalism site from the New York Times with a cringe-worthy name, released a really cool map detailing the preponderance of baseball fans by ZIP code. It’s based on data from Facebook. The Times has helpfully colored the Yankees areas an evil, dark gray.
The site also released draw-down maps based on some of baseball’s biggest rivalries. Say, Phillies and Mets!
Take baseball data, then add dialect maps. Presenting "Mets Fans Who Eat Hoagies": http://t.co/B3cGYm0Ghr pic.twitter.com/wcnBHZ3sBw
— Kevin Quealy (@KevinQ) April 24, 2014
Some interesting facts I’ve gleaned from the map:
- The percentage of Phillies fans in the city (78%) is actually lower than in Delaware (82%), Chester (79%), Montgomery (80%) and Bucks (80%) counties.
- But drill down and you find the hottest of hot Phillies ZIP codes. The Far Northeast is a particular hotbed. The ZIP code where I grew up, 19154, is 85% Phillies fans. (If I remember 1993 correctly, this seems accurate.) 19116 is 86%! Meanwhile, 19103 — where Philadelphia magazine’s offices are — is only 73%. Yes, these aren’t huge differences — stop ruining my fun.
- In the suburbs you get even bigger totals: Plymouth Meeting, 19462, is 87% Phillies fans.
- Even though there are thousands of imports from North Jersey, Long Island, and New York City at the University of Pennsylvania, the Yankees fan percentage there is only 10%. The Phillies still take 72%.
- Where are the limits of Phillies fandom? Draw a line between Trenton and Tuckerton and you get the Phillies-Yankees split. In southern Pennsylvania, the border is the Susquehanna River — but as you go farther north into Pennsylvania, the Phillies fan plurality stretches to places like Shippensburg, Burnham, Bellefonte, Zion, and Jersey Shore. In Northeastern Pennsylvania, Phillies fans turn into Yankees fans in the Poconos — Allentown is a Yankees fan exclave, depressingly. Going south, the Phillies dominate Delaware until one gets South of Lewes — the Fightins even pick up a few zip codes in Maryland.
- So where are the Mets in all of this? There is not one ZIP code in the United States that has a plurality of Mets fans. Not even the ZIP code the Mets’ home stadium, Citi Field, is in. Now this is a glorious fact.
