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As you all remember, we ran a poll to try to figure out which club Everton fans like as their second favorite team (or in a lot of cases, the team you despise the least). If you don't remember us hosting a poll, or you wish to see the results again, you can visit it here.
The poll was extremely unscientific. While in college, I had to take a couple of statistics classes and this poll pretty much violates all the rules that would have made these results statistically significant. But no complaining!
Full analysis after the jump.
The results are obviously going to comprise of people who happened to visit this site or are regular readers. That already makes this extremely biased because it is not randomly chosen Everton fans. Not to mention I had almost no control over who votes so that means the definition of "Everton fan" probably includes every teams supporters (yes, including the shite).
I have evidence of this because there were 24 (or 2%) people that voted for Liverpool.
But throwing all this statistics jargon (percentages... what does that even mean?) out the window, let's just get to what the results really mean and what results were surprising .
First of all, the club that finished first was Arsenal (really?). I really didn't think any of the Big Four clubs would get an abundance of votes, but somehow Arsenal ended up being the 2nd favorite team of Everton fans in this poll. My explanation? They are the least offensive of the Big Four. I don't need to explain Liverpool (except to those 24 people maybe). Chelsea only got 2% of the votes and I think that is directly related to many of their players having a "whiny attitude" or maybe just because they have recently been successful. Manchester United was another team that got a shocking number of votes. I think more of the "foreign" fans tended to vote for big name teams because that's most of what they have seen. Maybe people still have feelings for Rooney too.
Some other clubs that had a little more votes than average were Swansea City, Norwich City, and Wigan. These are all quite self-explanatory. It's hard to hate new teams in the Premier League. It's also hard to hate Swansea and Norwich because we haven't played them in so long. Norwich City also have awesome colors. Wigan on the other hand has always been struggling and has never been a "direct competitor" to Everton's standings. But the biggest factor is probably proximity. Wigan is quite close to Liverpool.
I do want to know why QPR was left out of the newcomer party, though? Do people not like them as much because they are located in London? Or is it because their owners are the worst owners in sports (Evidence here).
Which club got the most hate (or least like in this case)? Manchester City (obviously) and randomly enough Blackburn. I am dumbfounded by this. Am I blanking out on some chippy matches or something? Someone is going to have to explain to me the reason for this. Is it their Indian chicken owners that can just go around firing coaches for no reason? Or is it because Paul Robinson is now their GK? Or is it because they have a rose in their logo ( I mean, come on. What are you going to do, love me to death?). I just don't know.
Other than those few surprises, the vote was evenly spread out and that is what I really expected. Every fan tends to have some random connection to one team or another and that seems to be the main reason why people prefer certain teams as their second pick. Our supporters' full loyalty always lie with Everton and these polls don't reveal that much to us. While we may root for these teams when there is nothing to do, no one can question the fervor of Everton supporters.
I do know one thing, though. If Blackpool were still in the Premier League, they would run away with this vote.