Polls Credible and Incredible

We've all been wondering how a World Series championship would tip the balance of fandom in Chicago. After 24 years of collusion between the Cubs and Tribune, would one World Series be enough to bring the White Sox out of the shadow of Cubune marketing?

We finally have a scientific answer, showing the White Sox have achieved parity with the Cubs and the Bears, but I'll get to that in a moment. While we've been waiting for reliable numbers, the Tribune has been running some interference on the issue. Their effort started Oct. 29, 2005, the day after 1.75 million people attended a ticker-tape parade for the White Sox, when the Tribune ran a front-page story omitting that number (and so, minimizing the largest public gathering in Chicago history) and speculating that the White Sox would never be as "big" as their Cubs.

This May, Cubune watcher Keith Makenas alerted us to more Tribune funny stuff, coverage of a "Harris Poll" that claimed no real change in nationwide popularity between the two teams, with the Cubs remaining far ahead of the White Sox. The story appeared on Tribune-owned Chicagosports.com under the self-conscious headline, "Fanning the Flames: Cubs More Popular Than Sox." It only took a couple of minutes at the Harris Poll website to determine the poll wasn't a scientific Harris Poll at all. It was an unscientific "internet poll." The responses came from people who volunteer to answer internet polls in return for prize points. Most of the respondents to this internet poll also declared they don't follow baseball. The poll could hardly be construed as a scientific look at relative fandom in America or Chicago.

That Harris internet poll, in fact, was no more scientific than the Tribune's own internet poll, conducted by Chicagosports.com in May. With more than five times as many respondents as the Harris internet poll, it found a substantial shift of fans away from the Cubs and into the arms of the White Sox. Those poll results have since disappeared from Chicagosports.com. Funny how that happens.

Now to the results of the scientific study, released Friday by Scott Reifert, the White Sox vp for media relations. On his Inside the White Sox blog, Reifert writes:

Some of you may have heard of a company named Scarborough Research. They provide companies with information on consumers and they are one of the market research tools we utilize. Their info is often very interesting. In May, they released their data from March 2005 through February 2006 (basically, last season). During that time, the White Sox picked up an additional 1.1 million people in Chicago who had watched, attended or listened (WAL) to one of our games, an incredible increase. This increase from 2004 means that now just a few percentage points separate the White Sox WAL number from the Bears and Cubs. The three teams are in a virtual tie within the market. It will be interesting to see what the next Scarborough report shows (they come out once every six months or so). I am hoping we continue trending and can pass the other two teams.

Reifert goes on to discuss some interesting numbers concerning the growth of the internet as a major source of sports news for fans, at the expense of television and newspapers.