California vs. The World

The Reveille put up our latest update on the Associated Press college football rankings ( http://bit.ly/1cFcYIq ), and beyond showing that one voter pegged the Tigers as the 20th-best team in the country on his ballot this week, I found some interesting results in the pollster sentiment maps for Stanford, Ohio State and Baylor. The sentiment map is simple — it averages the ballot ranks for pollsters in a given state, then compares the states to one another to see where pollsters live who love a team, and where the ones live who hate a team.

This week, the most interesting thing I found in the weekly sentiment maps is the impression they can give of a California championing Stanford against a nation more keen on Ohio State or Baylor.Image

After checking out Stanford and their west coast support, compare that to the map for Ohio State:

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Or you could look at Baylor, which is quite similar (at least at first glance) to the map of sentiment generated for Ohio State:

Now, sentiment maps like this aren’t proof of regional bias… But if regional bias *does* exist, we would certainly expect to see it in the map. More updates as the season continues!Image

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