Obama Fans Read Buzzfeed, Romney's Shop eBay

Romney supporters are more likely to dig FarmVille and visit the web’s retail behemoth Amazon, according to new data from Trendsetter. Obama fans, on the other hand, favor online footwear merchant Zappos and are likely to check out restaurant reviews on Yelp.

Republican digital firm Engage employed its Trendsetter platform over the past few months to get a better sense of where users of popular social and e-commerce sites fall on the political spectrum. The study also took into account how politically engaged users of the sites were.

Trendsetter is a Klout-like social media influence measurement tool that gauges Facebook page interactions to determine Trendsetter scores for users. The platform is the baby of Engage and polling firm Winston Group.

Some results seem to reinforce stereotypes: crafty site Etsy draws Obama supporters while Romney fans are on real estate site Zillow.com. Still, they could give political advertisers a new way to understand the audiences they’re trying to reach online.

A few examples:

• Politically engaged Obama supporters read Buzzfeed, and use Google and Instagram.
• Romney supporters who talk politics online are likely to visit eBay and use PayPal.
• Pinterest is popular among Romney supporters, but among those who are not very politically engaged.
• Etsy, Reddit, and Tumblr attract less politically engaged Obama supporters.
• Sites like YouTube, Pandora, Hulu – and Facebook itself – sit in the middle, attracting what Engage calls swing voters.

According to a company post about the data from Engage President Patrick Ruffini, “visual pinboards and social games may be fertile ground for the campaigns to find new voters, as those sites often demonstrate defined political leanings combined with lower levels of political engagement.”

View larger graphic on Engage’s site.