Pigskin Politics

Pigskin politics is a political epithet used to describe or dismiss a person's pavlovian attachment to a political persuasion or party, given that party's/persuasion's past influence within the person's region. The term is usually used within the context of a person's attachment to a region or state whereby the person holds a specific set of beliefs and ideas as a result of having lived there.

The basis of this term comes from the generality of the allegiance to sports teams, whereby if a person is from a specific team's region, he/she is expected or pressured to support that team regardless of said team's performance, or bear negative social ramifications.

A broad example is the dichotomy between the Southern United States, which is stereotyped as conservative and the Northern United States which is stereotyped as a comparatively liberal region. Both of these regions supposedly have a mutual disdain for the other's political ideology. Conflict still echoing from the American Civil War creates the semblance of teams, and is played out as such occasionally in the United States Media.

Likewise, in elections often a candidate will select a running mate from a separate political region to gather votes from that specific region's demographic, who may not have otherwise voted for him/her, given the candidate's separate place of residence and thus supposedly separate ideals.

See also

*Ticket balance
*Logical fallacy
*Chauvinism