Biden or Trump: Who Would You Rather Drink a Beer With?
We used Ranker data to find out America’s answer.
Photo: Flickr
Like it or not, victory in American politics often goes not to the candidate with the better ideas, platform, or voting record, but to the candidate who’s more “likeable.” Two months before the 2004 election, a poll found that most undecided voters would rather drink a beer with President George W. Bush than with his opponent, John Kerry. Ever since, many pundits and pollsters have used the “drink a beer” test to define that elusive quality in politicians that has little or nothing to do with actual politics.
Which candidate would voters rather get a beer with — Donald Trump or Joe Biden? Ranker has an answer to that question, thanks to the nearly 130,000 votes on our list of Famous Politicians You'd Want to Have a Beer With. The answer may not predict who will actually win in November, but it does hold some interesting insights that both campaigns should consider as they seek to win over voters in the month before the election.
The Popular Vote
Photo: Flickr
Joe Biden is higher on the list than Donald Trump, sitting at #7 while Trump is all the way down at #20.
President Trump used to be far higher on the list: in fact, he was #5 from 2016 until the election in November (his opponent, Hillary Clinton, bounced between #17 and #19 during that same time period). Since taking office, however, Trump has been on a steady downward trajectory. His inauguration boosted him to #3, but by the end of his first year in office, he was back down to #6. A surge of interested voters to the list in September of this year sent him down from #8 to his current position at #20.
Photo: Ranker
NOTE: This graph maps the position of Donald Trump on our Famous Politicians You’d Want to Have a Beer With list. Keep in mind that the graph is a little counterintuitive, as a trend upward in this line actually indicates that Trump has gone down on the list (because the politician people want a drink with most is at #1). For example, when the line graph goes up from 2017 through most of 2019, it indicates that Trump actually went down on our list during that period. A line trending upward means Trump is becoming a less desired drinking buddy, while a line trending downward means he’s becoming more popular. Get it? Got it? Good.
Biden used to be higher as well, spending most of 2017 either one spot ahead of the president or one spot behind him. The former Vice President was the #2 politician on the list as recently as October 2017. Just like Trump, Biden also saw his ranking fall as more partisan voters visited the list, pushing him down from #4 to #9 over the course of the last year — only a few days before this blog post was published, Biden rose two spots from #9 to #7. But while his position is lower than it was, it’s been consistently higher than Trump’s on the list over the last few years — the last time Trump ranked above him was September 2018.
Photo: Ranker
On the other hand, Donald Trump has more upvotes than Biden does by a long shot, with 2,035 people voting him up the list compared to Biden’s 1,632. But Trump’s lead in downvotes is even higher, beating Biden by a margin of 2,632 to 1,887. If we count every downvote for Trump as a vote for Biden and every downvote for Biden as a vote for Trump, Biden comes away with a lead of 4,270 to 3,922: 52% of the popular vote.
The Electoral College
But as the elections in 2016 and 2000 taught us (to say nothing of the elections of 1824, 1876, and 1888), the winner of the popular vote doesn’t always end up winning the election. When we drilled down to find the locations of our voters, we found that in most states, people would rather get a beer with President Trump than with Joe Biden. Looking at the electoral map, we found that the states where people would rather drink with Trump added up to a total of 341 electoral votes, which would make Donald Trump the winner of the electoral college.
Photo: Ranker