PPP Poll: Nebraskans Love Tom Osborne, Bo Pelini, and the Big Ten

by Husker Mike on Oct 16, 2011 3:18 PM CDT in College Football - National

Public Policy Polling conducted a survey of 739 Nebraskans between September 30th and October 2nd and found some interesting results. Interesting not in the opinions themselves, but at how high the numbers are. 86% of Nebraskans have a favorable opinion of Tom Osborne and 70% have a favorable opinion of Bo Pelini. PPP summed it up this way:

It's rare when we poll a state to find a college football coach that 70% of voters have ever even heard of, much less have a positive opinion of.

Now, I wonder if those numbers might have been slightly lower after the Huskers loss to Wisconsin on October 1st, but the point is clear. Nebraskans overwhelmingly like the Huskers and the program.

Digging into the numbers, Osborne's support seems to be universal across all demographics: young, old, people in the east, people in the west, male, female. The only exception: people who consider themselves politically "very liberal," which shouldn't surprise you when you consider Osborne's conservative political philosophy. Even so, Osborne gets a 68% favorability rating with 18% not sure and only 15% having an unfavorable opinion of Nebraska's legendary coach and athletic director.

Pelini's favorability seems fairly universal as well, though I did notice that Pelini's favorability is only 60% with those aged 18 to 29. All other demographics have Pelini over 70% positive. And even with those youngsters, the 20% of those who have negative opinions of Pelini are tied with the 20% who don't have an opinion of Nebraska's coach.

Nebraska's move to the Big Ten was also very popular, as Nebraskans favored the Big Ten over the Big XII by a 65% to 13% margin. I assume that most of those 13% that preferred the Big XII were Missouri, Kansas, and Texas fans. Interesting that the Big XII scored highest with those aged 65 and older; maybe for those folks, the tradition and legacy of the Big XII was a little more attractive.

In other states, there are some interesting numbers. 51% of Iowans are Hawkeye fans, while 25% are fans of Iowa State. Texas is the most disliked state (31% negative opinion), which shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. In Missouri, 35% want the Tigers to stay in the Big XII while 21% want the Tigers in the Big Ten. Only 2% prefer the SEC; even the ACC outpolls that at 4%. In the state of Texas, 23% are Longhorn fans, 15% are A&M fans, and a surprising 11% are Baylor fans. 9% are Houston fans, 8% are SMU fans, while only 5% each are Texas Tech or TCU fans.

Maybe that explains why Baylor got the invitation to join the Big XII back in the middle 1990's instead of TCU or Houston.

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Your N for the survey was the 739 people who happened to be near a phone when the survey was conducted.

0.04% of Nebraskans…

But other than that, nice to know those 739 Nebraskans contacted are mostly approving of the Nebraska AD and their coaches.

A Cornhusker through feast or famine. Get up, dust yourself off and run the ball. That's the Nebraska way.

by Salt Creek and Stadium on Oct 16, 2011 3:26 PM CDT reply actions

There's not much detail in that press release about their sampling methods, so we don't know precisely how random they were

But 739 is a pretty strong sample size for this kind of study.

by Cheeseandcorn on Oct 16, 2011 3:30 PM CDT up reply actions

Less than 1% of the population though...

A Cornhusker through feast or famine. Get up, dust yourself off and run the ball. That's the Nebraska way.

by Salt Creek and Stadium on Oct 16, 2011 3:46 PM CDT up reply actions

You expect them to survey 17,000 people?

739 isn’t a be-all-end-all survey, but it’s not bad.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.
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by Semicorrect on Oct 16, 2011 6:30 PM CDT up reply actions

PPP is a professional polling agency

They’re very accurate, and you’d be surprised how small a sample size can result in a pretty small margin of error. Case in point: most national presidential approval polls use ~3000 people and the consensus is that sample size reliably depicts the opinion of 300 million Americans.

As a supplement to what Mike said about liberals, it makes sense that they’d approve less of Osborne than conservatives not only because of Osborne’s political leanings but also because they tend to be less likely to be football fans. Not a blanket statement of course, some of the most rabid Husker fans I know are Obamamaniacs, but for whatever reason many lefties tend to prefer less “American” sports such as soccer. That’s my experience anyway.

"My hardest job is to convince the people of Nebraska that 10-1 is not a losing season." - Tom Osborne

by jdhusker on Oct 16, 2011 8:20 PM CDT up reply actions

I thought about expanding on that...

…but I’ve been accused of going political too often, so I thought I’d stop there. (Last week, I was told that I should get my communist butt on the next plane to China…) This is, after all, a sports blog…

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by Husker Mike on Oct 16, 2011 9:22 PM CDT up reply actions

Nonsense

You’d be much happier in Canada or France. :P

But yeah I feel your pain to the extent that I’m very fond of referencing politics in otherwise unrelated conversations, and can sometimes get myself into trouble by denigrating the folks to my left, usually unintentionally.

The wider discussion of the cultural preferences of the left and the right is a pretty interesting one to say the least though. I’m thinking there’s some sort of television show preferences graph floating around out there somewhere.

"My hardest job is to convince the people of Nebraska that 10-1 is not a losing season." - Tom Osborne

by jdhusker on Oct 16, 2011 10:41 PM CDT up reply actions