Vance recently came across a survey conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP) which inquired about respondents’ views on different NFL teams and NFL quarterbacks (QBs).  The survey inquires about these topics by using a favorable and unfavorable scale.  To read the full article click here.  It’s a lengthier press release due to the number of cross-tabulations at the end.  As far as the Bunker is concerned, nothing is more enticing than blogging about market research and the NFL.

Here is an excerpt of the poll:

PPP surveyed 700 American voters from December 16th to 18th. The margin of error for the survey is +/-3.7%. This poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization. PPP surveys are conducted through automated telephone interviews. PPP is a Democratic polling company, but polling expert Nate Silver of the New York Times found that its surveys in 2010 actually exhibited a slight bias toward Republican candidates.

Here are our key takeaways from the poll:

Vance: As a Buffalo Bills fan, my judgment and opinions on football-related matters should be taken with a grain of salt. That said, it is the fact that I root for a team not even mentioned in this poll that brings up one of my biggest questions about the survey instrument: In Q12, the respondents were asked, “Given the choices of the Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, New England Patriots, New York Giants, New York Jets, New Orleans Saints, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Washington Redskins, which is your favorite NFL team?” Almost a quarter (24%) of the respondents answered Someone else/not sure, which would seem to account for those of us who root for other teams, but providing the limited set of teams right in the wording of the question obviously biases the results in the favor of those teams. One other interesting quirk of this poll that caught my eye, was that it was conducted among registered voters. This begs the questions of whether registered voters are representative of football fandom in general (I suspect there are probably some key differences), and if certain teams, because of geography and demographic factors, would tend to skew high or low in terms of the percentage of their fan base that are registered voters. Of course, I don’t want to come off as too critical of this poll (if I do, chalk it up to the natural crankiness of a bitter Bills fan). It’s a fun topic, and the findings largely conform to what decades of following the NFL would have led me to expect.

Chris: I was surprised to see that Eli Manning was third on the least favorite quarterback question (removing the ‘not sure’ category), being that he is one of the least controversial quarterback’s in the league (see: any press conference he’s done). An interesting breakdown that I think would provide some more insight would be the correlation between those who selected a certain team as their favorite, and the quarterback/team they selected as their least favorite.  This would likely reveal the obvious rivalries, but potentially show some interesting results.  Along with that idea, I think the real interesting data here is in all of the cross-tabs.  With this poll being conducted in the middle of the ‘Tebowing’ craze, I was not surprised to find that he is highly favored among conservatives. Overall, I think this is a really fun poll; it’s interesting to see NFL fan data on a large-scale.

George: I would have liked to see a question about how knowledgeable of the NFL the respondents are (very knowledgeable about the NFL to not at all knowledgeable about the NFL).  One statistic that kept popping out to me was the percentage of unsure respondents with regards to favorable or unfavorable, particularly in the quarterback series.  I would think the bigger fans would have opinions on all quarterbacks (a love/hate kind of thing).  I think the higher percentage of respondents who favor the Packers could be due to those lesser NFL fans jumping on the bandwagon of a NFL championship and undefeated season (being they were always in the news at the time of the study).  Although, you think those higher percentages for the Packers would translate to Aaron Rodgers’ favorability, but they didn’t.  I suppose he hasn’t been in the spotlight as long as a Peyton Manning or Tom Brady.  Interestingly, Tebow had a lot of favorability overall, but was not well-liked among younger age groups (18-29) where almost an even percentage stated they view him favorably and unfavorably.

Finally, Vance also points out that Harris Interactive does a similar poll that is updated yearly. The results of their 2011 poll, complete with trend data, can be found here: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/HI-Harris-Poll-Football-2011-10-05.pdf.  Research & Marketing Strategies (RMS) is market research firm in Syracuse, NY.