‘Duck Dynasty’ vs. ‘Modern Family’: 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide

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Men with long beards and Christian values center the most geographically divisive show in the data set. “Duck Dynasty,” a reality show on A&E, follows the over-the-top lives of a Louisiana family that makes the Duck Commander duck call.

It is the prototypical example of a show that is most popular in rural areas. The correlation between fandom and the percentage of people who voted for Mr. Trump was higher for “Duck Dynasty” than it was for any other show.

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Americans have been clustering themselves into cultural bubbles just as they have clustered in political bubbles. Their TV preferences confirm that.

If you had to guess how strongly a place supported Donald J. Trump in the election, would you rather know how popular ‘Duck Dynasty’ is there, or how George W. Bush did there in 2000? It turns out the relationship with the TV show is stronger.

That’s how closely connected politics and culture can be.

The cultural divide largely falls along urban/rural lines. We saw a similar divide in November, with Hillary Clinton winning in cities, college towns, Native American reservations and areas with black and Hispanic majorities. Mr. Trump earned more votes in rural areas.

When we looked at how many active Facebook users in a given ZIP code “liked” certain TV shows, we found that the 50 most-liked shows clustered into three groups with distinct geographic distributions. Together they reveal a national culture split among three regions: cities and their suburbs; rural areas; and what we’re calling the extended Black Belt — a swath that extends from the Mississippi River along the Eastern Seaboard up to Washington, but also including city centers and other places with large nonwhite populations.

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