The UW vs. WSU rivalry used to be a decent analogue for local Washington politics (adjust maybe by saying that anywhere with 35%+ support for WSU would vote Republican). With Pullman trending to the left and the Pacific coast trending to the right, though, that probably won't last much longer, even if all the stereotypes about UW supporters being the same as stereotypes of Democrats and the stereotypes of WSU supporters being the same as stereotypes of Republicans will probably persist.
Intrastate college football rivalries are interesting measures, I love it! I do wonder how many states you could do a similar thing for, provided the breakdown is SOMEWHAT close. In states like Illinois (ILL over NU), Iowa (IOWA over ISU), Tennessee (TENN over VU), etc. where one school dominates the other in terms of fans, it's not quite as fun of a comparison.
- I imagine a somewhat similar pattern holds for Oregon and Oregon State as you mentioned? I've heard that phrased as "Hippies vs. Farmers" before. With that said, Oregon does dominate Oregon State, so you'd need a similar adjustment to what you had.
- While both fan bases probably lean heavily Republican, I'd guess Ole Miss fans would be significantly more Republican than Mississippi State fans? A gal I met from Mississippi once told me that Mississippi State was more the "people's school" and had more fans, and that Black Mississippians were much more receptive to cheer for Mississippi State.
- Similar to MS, I imagine both SC fan bases skew heavily Republican, but I would imagine Clemson fans are much more Republican than South Carolina fans?
- Again, while both skew Republican, I imagine that Texas A&M fans are MUCH more Republican overall than Texas fans.
- I'm willing to bet UVA fans are much more Democratic on average than VT fans in Virginia.
- Arizona is really interesting ... it seems UA is more popular in more Hispanic areas than ASU is, so maybe ASU more Republican?
The typical intrastate college rivalry pits the public university that was originally the "arts and letters" university or the "normal school" (for educating teachers) against the "agricultural and mechanical institute" (originally intended to train farmers in the latest agricultural techniques and train engineers for things like railroads and mining and bridges). Usually that results in the stereotype of the former being pretentious and hoity-toity and the latter being a bunch of slackjawed uncouth yokels.
| State | Arts & Letters/Normal | Agriculture & Engineering |
| Texas | Texas | Texas A&M |
| Alabama | Alabama | Auburn |
| Oklahoma | Oklahoma | Oklahoma State |
| Mississippi | Ole Miss | Mississippi State |
| Virginia | UVA | Virginia Tech |
| Kansas | Kansas | Kansas State |
| Indiana | Indiana | Purdue |
That skews things to the extent that:
-If you're going to major in STEM, you'll probably go to the ag/mech school.
-The arts & letters university is typically the more academically selective flagship and as a result attracts more students intending to go to grad school or students from out of state.
-The arts & letters university is a more logical choice to major in liberal arts/humanities.
-Their STEM focus makes the ag/mech student body skew more male, but typically not as overwhelmingly so as some smaller private engineering-focused colleges.
-UT is much more demographically reflective of Texas than Texas A&M is (UT gets a lot of Hispanic students and out-of-state students from all over the country; TAMU is much whiter and gets most of its out-of-state students from the South); their fan base is probably still quite Republican due to the existence of the older cohorts of alumni and the bandwagon effect for people who never went there
-Arizona State attracts underachieving privileged white kids from California and Texas, which no doubt skews things in the Republican direction; the University of Arizona AFAIK does not have that reputation
