Contrary to conventional wisdom, more college basketball fans consider themselves âDuke supportersâ than âDuke haters.â
But more importantly, most âdonât care.â
On a national poll completed this week of 800 likely voters, fully 40% identified themselves as college basketball fans. They were asked the following question:
As you may know, Duke University won the NCAA basketball championship last week, defeating Butler University in the championship game. Generally speaking, do you consider yourself a Duke basketball supporter, a Duke basketball hater, are you somewhere in between, or donât you care one way or another?
Seventeen percent of college basketball fans percent identified themselves as Duke supporters, compared to just 10% who say they are Duke haters. A little over a quarter of the basketball fans (27%) said they were somewhere âin betweenâ the two, and about half (46%) said they âdidnât care one way or another.â
Neil Newhouse (Duke â74 grad), a founding partner of Public Opinion Strategies, the firm that conducted the survey, noted, âIâm really surprised by these results. I had always believed that Duke basketballâs success had engendered more nay-sayers than supporters, but the data clearly shows that not to be the case. So, Duke basketball fans take note of two things â first, there are more of us out there than you think. And, second â most college basketball fans simply donât care one way or another about Duke basketball.â
The poll was conducted April 11-13 and included 800 interviews with 2010 likely voters. Respondents who were asked the question about Duke basketball were first screened to determine if they were college basketball fans. Forty percent of the sample considered themselves college basketball fans.
The margin of error for the entire poll is ±3.1% in 95 of 100 cases, and the margin of error on the Duke basketball question asked only of college basketball fans is ±5.5%.
Contact Neil Newhouse with questions - Neil@pos.org