Chiefs Fans Like Trump More Than Eagles Fans

President Donald Trump congratulated what he called the Kansas City Chiefs’ “MAGA” fans following the team’s AFC championship victory that sent it to the Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles.

If Trump is suggesting that Chiefs fans like him more than Eagles fans, Morning Consult Intelligence data accessed via our AI platform shows he might be right as he prepares to head to New Orleans for Sunday’s game despite what USA Today called a “complicated history with the NFL.” However, the two teams’ fan bases are generally bipartisan.

Surveys conducted since Trump returned to the White House show 58% of Chiefs fans (defined here as those with favorable views of the team) approve of his job performance, compared with 51% of Eagles fans. Those who like the Philadelphia team, meanwhile, are more likely to disapprove of Trump’s job performance than Chiefs fans (41% to 35%). 

The two teams are almost equally popular among Americans (37% of adults view the Chiefs favorably, while 38% say the same of the Eagles), but partisan splits exist about the two franchises. Republicans are more likely to view the Chiefs unfavorably than they are the Eagles (29% to 10%).

However, when it comes to the two teams’ fan bases, Chiefs fans are only slightly more Republican than Americans who like the Eagles.

According to Morning Consult Audience data, 38% of Chiefs fans are Republicans, compared with 35% of Eagles fans. More Eagles fans identify as independents than Chiefs fans (32% to 28%). 

The bottom line

More broadly, our Audience data shows the NFL as a whole’s brand has recovered from all-time lows clocked in mid-2017 after Trump called for the firing of any players who kneeled during the national anthem at games. Since then, Republicans have largely come back into the fold along with a new cohort of female fans who came into the mix after Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce went public with their relationship, we noted earlier this week. 

Despite Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s endorsement of Trump and vocal conservative politics, apparent Trump alignment by Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ wife, or the Chiefs owner’s Republican bent, the Missouri-based team — also immersed in the media dominance of Swift, a high-profile Democratic-backer — sports a generally bipartisan fanbase nationwide. 

That’s similar to the status of people with whom the Eagles are popular, even after a 2018 rift that got the swing-state team disinvited from the White House for a Super Bowl celebration, and suggests that a player’s public-facing politics — or its owners big spending on Republicans — may not weigh much on fan bases. Any dislike of the Chiefs may simply come down to sports fans’ tiring of the emerging dynasty.