Political Books: Goodreads Compares Parties' Literary Tastes

Literary Tastes Of Democrats vs Republicans

Popular book-rating website Goodreads has created an infographic about their users' preferences related to political parties. The site asked their readers who they would vote for in the upcoming election, then analyzed their literary tastes.

According to the infographic, Romney fans and Obama fans on Goodreads each read a median of 26 books in 2012, however, they typically were not picking up the same titles. While Obama fans were three times more likely to read "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen and two times more likely to read "Nickled and Dimed," a nonfiction book about the minimum wage by Barbara Ehrenreich, Romney fans were four times more likely to read "Heaven is for Real" by Todd Burpo, a true story about the son of a pastor in Nebraska.

It perhaps comes as no surprise that Romney fans gave "Atlas Shrugged" an average of four stars (one star more then Obama fans), as vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan once cited Ayn Rand as his favorite author.

The two parties could agree on one book, however: "The Big Short," Michael Lewis's foray into the recent economic crisis, scored highly with both groups.

Amazon created a similar chart in August -- an interactive map that determines whether a state's literary tastes are "red" or "blue" based on the number of conservative or liberal-leaning books bought there.

Check out this Goodreads infographic, and tell us about your favorite political books in the comments:

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