Social media’s promise was that people with different views and political ties could mingle in digital bliss. But some social sites are more popular with one political party than another.
According to a new survey by the Harvard Institute of Politics, Democrats love Google Plus and Twitter, while Republicans are more interested in sharing on Pinterest.
The poll, which was published on Tuesday, asked 3,058 Americans ages of 18 to 29 which social sites they preferred to use. The survey was conducted from March 22 to April 4. The margin of sampling error was 2 percentage points, so differences of less than that amount are statistically insignificant.
Some sites showed virtually no differences between the parties. Democrats and Republicans used Facebook the same amount, 87 percent. With Snapchat, 24 percent of Democrats and 23 percent of Republicans said they actively used the service.
Most other sites were predominantly used by Democrats, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Tumblr.
While it’s difficult to tell why more Republicans than Democrats have joined Pinterest, this could be because of Mitt Romney, who used Pinterest to share pictures and information during his presidential campaign. His wife, Ann Romney, was also a frequent user of the site.
In 2012, Adrien Chen wrote on Gawker that one of the reasons Republicans liked Pinterest is that it encouraged people to be nice and respectful to each other.
“Pinterest is the most inoffensive, white-bread place on the Internet, a gated community of perfectly curated boards sprinkled with Etsy-made children’s toys and food blog recipes,” Mr. Chen wrote.
When those surveyed were asked to chose “one website, social network or app” that they could not live without, 24 percent said they couldn’t imagine being without Facebook, while 7 percent said Google was their site of choice.