That's what I've done for the last three years here at Baseballot. Harris may be the only pollster that canvasses the whole nation about all 30 teams, but our friends over at Public Policy Polling (PPP) love to throw a baseball question or two into their state-by-state political polls. For each state that PPP polls, I use the latest population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau to estimate a raw number of fans for each team in that state. Here are the cumulative figures nationwide for July 2017:
| Team | Fans | Team | Fans |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York Yankees | 25,226,872 | Colorado Rockies | 5,017,208 |
| Boston Red Sox | 20,193,922 | Kansas City Royals | 4,830,504 |
| Atlanta Braves | 20,085,743 | Baltimore Orioles | 4,612,809 |
| Chicago Cubs | 18,407,160 | Minnesota Twins | 4,541,341 |
| San Francisco Giants | 11,353,160 | Cleveland Indians | 4,331,383 |
| Texas Rangers | 10,414,884 | Arizona Diamondbacks | 4,207,748 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 8,743,144 | Pittsburgh Pirates | 4,161,965 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 8,380,484 | Milwaukee Brewers | 3,975,281 |
| Detroit Tigers | 7,594,395 | Oakland Athletics | 3,842,463 |
| New York Mets | 7,035,826 | San Diego Padres | 3,371,712 |
| Houston Astros | 6,734,407 | Chicago White Sox | 3,023,366 |
| Los Angeles Angels | 6,702,815 | Tampa Bay Rays | 3,017,097 |
| Seattle Mariners | 6,023,758 | Miami Marlins | 2,979,375 |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 5,402,108 | Washington Nationals | 2,812,690 |
| Cincinnati Reds | 5,107,524 | Toronto Blue Jays* | 210,801 |
*These numbers do not include fans in Canada, meaning the Blue Jays are surely underrepresented.
Unfortunately, we haven't gotten a lot of new baseball polls in the past 12 months; PPP was busy asking poll questions about something else, I guess. We did get a new poll of Florida, which is as much a baseball bellwether as it is a political one. In last September's poll, the Yankees reclaimed the title of Florida's favorite baseball team, just as they are America's favorite team with an estimated 25,226,872 fans nationwide. New York (AL) leapfrogged ahead of the Marlins and Rays in the Sunshine State, the two teams fighting for the dubious honor of least popular in the United States. (The numbers above don't include Washington, DC, either, so the Nationals are undercounted just like the Blue Jays.)
We also learned about the baseball preferences of Utah for the first time (finding: they don't really care too much), bringing the coverage of our makeshift baseball census to 39 of the 50 states (representing 88.5% of the U.S. population). Here's what's still missing:
Obviously, then, there are some limitations to this exercise. Missing states like Indiana and Alabama means our numbers for teams like the Cubs/White Sox and Braves are lower than they truly are. And PPP's baseball questions are worded in an opt-out manner, so 78% of poll respondents nationwide claimed to have a favorite team even though we know that only around 40–50% of Americans are baseball fans. On the other hand, PPP also only has time to ask about eight or so MLB teams per state, meaning the handful of fans of the other ~22 teams in that state don't get counted. So, yes, this census is hardly scientific, but it's a fun rough approximation of some very interesting data.
