Sometimes, it feels like the bitter arguments between Apple fanboys and Android lovers are as irreconcilable as those between Democrats and Republicans.
Turns out, however, that analogy doesn't run too far. According to a new survey from Harris Interactive, both iPhone and Android supporters find common ground when picking the next president: Regardless of whether they're on iOS or Android, smartphone owners overwhelmingly choose Barack Obama.
Per the 800 iPhone and Android users polled by Harris, smartphone owners -- no matter their choice of mobile operating system -- would vote for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney, 49 percent to 31 percent. That wide margin is consistent from iOS to Android, with iPhone owners preferring Obama to Romney 47 percent to 34 percent and Android owners preferring Obama to Romney 50 percent to 29 percent.
A cute infographic with a boxing elephant and donkey, along with a few more findings from the survey, can be found below:
So what do these stats -- if they are indeed accurate -- mean? The survey was commissioned by Velti, a mobile marketing firm, who said in a statement that the results are proof positive that the new most important platform for political advertising will be the smartphone (the implication being that Romney is somehow lagging behind Obama in outreach to the smartphone-owning demographic). Velti, being a mobile marketing firm, has every reason to use these statistics to tout the importance of mobile marketing, of course. Take that for what it's worth.
If they're right, expect politics to infiltrate your Galaxy S III or iPhone. Just as texting campaign donations might soon become de rigueur, so too might candidates interacting with you on your smartphone. The latter is already occurring: In June Mitt Romney became the first U.S. politician to use Apple's iAd service in June and is targeting Google ads for Android, too. Barack Obama was expected to join him in solicitation via smartphone.
Just how effectively a candidate will be able to sway an undecided voter via a mobile advertisement remains to be seen. What seems more clear to us (if the results hold across a larger sample size) is that early adopters of technology -- remember that, with just over 50 percent of Americans own smartphones, the smartphone is a relatively young innovation -- tend to swing toward Obama. A more cynical take might also be that Obama supporters tend to sit around taking Internet surveys, while Romney supporters do not.
Whatever the cause, it is at least heartening to see the dueling gang of iPhone and Android users -- who scratch at each other so ferociously otherwise -- come together for a common cause. For one shining moment, they did not call each other losers or morons or hopeless zombies. Now that's cool.