Grist for a slow day: The Guardian reports on social science research using hacked data from the Ashley Madison adultery website and voter data from five states that
The study of 80,000 voters in five US states found that Democrats used the Ashley Madison adultery website substantially less than Republicans, Libertarians, Greens and unaffiliated voters. Libertarians consistently ranked as the site’s most frequent clients.
The results highlight an apparent paradox where those with more conservative views and supposedly stricter attitudes towards sex seem happier to hop into bed with someone outside their relationship than more liberal types.
But careful. We know all this kind of research is mostly hogwash, thanks to Lindsey’s cover story this week. So draw no conclusions from this or the data that shows divorce and out-of-wedlock pregnancy are higher in Bible Belt states like Arkansas, where churchgoing is higher.
Arkansas wasn’t among the states sampled in this study. But neighboring Oklahoma was there.
According to the study, the smallest percentage of the website’s clients lived in Oklahoma, where only one in 943 voters had made payments to the site. But the state, which has backed a Republican in every presidential election since 1968, boasted the greatest political split in users, with fewer than one in 1,500 Democrats holding an Ashley Madison account compared with one in 700 Republicans.