By now you’ve probably seen the Wheaties/Tarefic award winners, and I hope also the resulting argument between fMh and BCC about who deserved to win the coveted Best Big Blog award, and what it really meant. (If you haven’t seen the argument posts, do yourself a favor and check them out. They’re hilarious!) The purpose of this post is to show a few additional results of the voting that you haven’t already seen, and that I hope you might find interesting.

We just had a presidential election (in the US, anyway), and given how the electoral college works, of course there was a lot of discussion of which states which candidates are popular in. I thought it might be interesting to look at a similar analysis by region of the results of the Tarefic/Wheaties Awards.

There were a total of 327 ballots cast in the voting. This is counting one IP address (which the poll plug-in records to try to prevent one person from casting multiple ballots) as one ballot.To do an analysis of the results by region, I first looked up the location of each ballot’s IP address using freegeoip.net. Of the 322 ballots that could be located in the database, 22 came from outside the United States. (There were 4 ballots each from Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands, 3 from the UK, and 1 each from Austria, South Korea, and Taiwan.) Here is a map showing which states the 300 ballots from the US came from.

Not surprisingly, Utah led with 89 ballots, followed by California with 35. At the other end of the spectrum, 11 states contributed no ballots at all. These were mostly states that have small populations in general, or few Mormons, or both. No ballots from Hawaii might be the most unexpected result.

In order to look at votes by region, I grouped countries and states together to have a large enough number of ballots in each region that the results might be interesting to look at. I grouped all ballots from outside the US together, and grouped states in the US approximately following region and division lines used by the US Census Bureau. (I deviated from the Census Bureau in making Utah its own region, and in aggregating up from the division to the region level for divisions that had few ballots.)

The resulting regions and total ballot counts were as follows:

  • Utah: 89
  • Pacific: 61
  • Mountain: 42
  • Midwest: 33
  • South: 22
  • Northeast: 17
  • South Atlantic: 36
  • Non-US: 22

Below, I list each question in the awards voting, show a graph that tells how many votes each of the top three vote-getters received from each of the eight regions. I limited the graphs to the top three vote-getters to make them easier to look at; with more, they get cluttered quickly. In all the graphs, the blue bars are for the winner, the red bars for the second place finisher, and the green bars for the third place finisher. Note that the sum of the votes for the three bars in each region is not the same across questions because not all ballots included votes for all questions.

For each question, I also list winners in the same category in voting for the Niblets in previous years. Note that not every category was used in all previous years. In some cases, I mention blogs that won for similar categories rather than the exact same question. Here are links to posts giving results for previous years: 2010 2009 2008 2006 2005 (Note that no Niblets were held in 2011, and the 2007 Niblets were hosted by Trash Calls, which is now viewable by invitation only.)

Best Big Blog

2012: Feminist Mormon Housewives
2010: By Common Consent
2009: By Common Consent
2008: By Common Consent
2007: By Common Consent
2006: By Common Consent
2005: By Common Consent / Times and Seasons

In this hotly contested race, fMh took the western part of the US and BCC took the central and eastern parts. Perhaps before next year’s awards, BCC missionaries will be sent from Washington DC to California to drum up more votes.

Best Group Blog

2012: Doves and Serpents
2009: Segullah
2008: Segullah
2007: Zelophehad’s Daughters (best small blog)
2006: Zelophehad’s Daughters
2005: Nine Moons

Doves and Serpents took the Mormon Corridor, trumping Lynnette’s home field advantage in the Pacific region for ZD. Also, it looks like Juvenile Instructor had a similar strong showing to BCC in the eastern US.

Best Humorous Blog

2012: As Sistas in Zion
2009: My Regis Blog

Best Solo Blog

2012: Keepapitchinin, by Ardis Parshall
2009: Keepapitchinin
2008: Keepapitchinin
2007: Dave’s Mormon Inquiry (most votes of any solo blog for best small blog)
2006: Dave’s Mormon Inquiry
2005: Dave’s Mormon Inquiry

Ardis ran the table.

Best New Blog

2012: Peculiar People
2009: As Sistas in Zion
2008: Keepapitchinin
2007: Juvenile Instructor / Mormon Matters
2006: Mormon Mentality
2005: Snarkernacle

Best Blog Layout/Graphics

2012: fMh (redesign)
2009: Times and Seasons
2008: My Regis Blog / Nine Moons

Best Overall Blogger

2012: Hawkgrrrl
2010: Ardis Parshall
2009: Tracy M.
2008: Ardis Parshall
2007: Kevin Barney
2006: Wilfried Decoo
2005: Wilfried Decoo

It seems appropriate that Hawkgrrrl would win by a large margin in particular outside the US given how much time she’s spent living and working and traveling all over the world.

Best Commenter

2012: Hawkgrrrl
2010: MikeInWeHo
2009: MikeInWeHo
2008: Ray
2007: Julie M. Smith
2006: gst
2005: annegb

It’s interesting to compare this graph with the previous one. In voting for best commenter, Hawkgrrrl dominated Utah, while in the voting for best blogger, it wasn’t one of her better regions.

Funniest Thread

2012: Ziff, “Nacle Notebook 2012: Funny Comments” (ZD)
2009: Karen H., “Come, Ye Poets of the Bloggernacle” (BCC)

Best Post Title

2012: Cynthia L., “Exactly 1000 words on pants” (BCC)
2009: Kaimi, “How Wide the Divide . . . and can we ever Bridget?” (T&S)
2008: Kris Wright, “I Was Naked and Ye Shot Me” (BCC, nominated as a write-in)

Best Humorous Post

2012: Matt Page, “John McNaughton’s Idea Journal” (BCC)
2010: Matt Page, “Moroni Vuvuzela” (BCC)
2009: BCC, “Police Beat Roundtable #14-19”
2008: TAMN, “The Down-There Doc” (Seriously So Blessed) / BCC: “Police Beat Roundtable #10”

It appears that only outside the US does laughing about President Uchtdorf trump laughing about Jon McNaughton.

Best Historical Post

2012: Rock Waterman, “Are We Paying Too Much Tithing?” (Pure Mormonism)
2010: Brad Kramer and Daymon Smith, “Correlation” (BCC)
2009: John Hamer, “The Milk Strippings Story” (BCC)
2008: Ardis Parshall, “Codes and Cyphers in Mormon History” (Keepapitchinin)

Best Spiritual Post

2012: Jacob Baker, “All Eternity Shakes: Mormonism’s Weeping God” (BCC)
2009: JA Benson, “Tears in Heaven” (Millennial Star)
2008: Kristine, “When Saw We Thee an Awkward Preteen?” (BCC) / Russell Arben Fox, “Auld Lang Sin” (BCC)

Best Doctrinal Post

2012: Rock Waterman, “Are We Paying Too Much Tithing?” (Pure Mormonism)
2010: Ardis Parshall, “Scriptural Literalism” (Keepapitchinin)
2009: Brad Kramer, “There is an end to Race” (BCC)
2008: AdamF, “‘Never Lead Us Astray.’ And Dissonance” (Mormon Matters) / Julie M. Smith, “Is There Another Approach?” (T&S)
2007: Kristine, “Why I Liked President Beck’s Talk (Mostly)” (BCC) (best post)

Best Personal Post

2012: Kristine, “To See Face to Face” (BCC)
2009: Tracy M., “A Study in Contrasts: The Dole” (BCC)
2006: Ardis Parshall, “Dressing the Dead” (T&S) (Won for best post)
2005: Wilfried Decoo, “Coffee” (T&S) (Won for best post)

Best Current Events Post

2012: fmhLisa, “On Nastiness: Why Nice Mormons Can be so very very mean about pants” (fMh)
2010: Stephanie, “Fascinating Womanhood” (fMh) (voted best political post) / John C.: “LDS Gospel Teaching” (BCC) (voted best post on contemporary Mormonism)
2009: Brad Kramer, “Captain Moroni is not a man of God” (BCC)
2008: TAMN, “TAMNers Goes to Washington” (Seriously So Blessed)

Best Book/Article Review

2012: Juvenile Instructor’s series on Turner’s biography of Brigham Young
2009: Amri Brown, “Review: The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance” (BCC)

Best Contribution to the Bloggernacle

2012: Joanna Brooks appearing on The Daily Show
2010: Scott B., “Bloggernacle Classics: The Banner of Heaven Weblog” (BCC)
2009: Tracy M., for sharing her life publicly
2008: Tracy M., chronicling the struggle of her husband’s unemployment

Joanna Brooks did well most everywhere, but really dominated in Utah.

Best Contribution to Interfaith Dialogue

2012: Joanna Brooks
2009: Bridget Jack Meyers at Clobberblog
2008: Bridget Jack Meyers (voted “Nicest ‘Evil Villain'”)

Best Mormon Podcast Series

2012: Mormon Stories
2006: Mormon Stories (write-in category)

Best Mormon Facebook Community

2012: Feminist Mormon Housewives Society

Comparing just the first two, it’s interesting that Mormon Stories won Utah and fMh won the Pacific region, both by fairly big margins.

Wheaties Write-in

2012: Best Social Activism – All Enlisted – Wear Pants to Church Day
2010: BCC Zeitcast
2009: Best community: fMh
2008: Best sideblog: BCC
2007: Best controversies: Mormon grad students on welfare (Devyn S. at Mormon Mentality) / Waldorf style nursery (Artemis at fMh)
2006: Best podcast: Mormon Stories

Worst Mormon Internet Drama

2012: Pantspocalypse

As a fan of Pantspocalypse, I have to say I’m happy to see that it got enough exposure to annoy voters in all regions. 🙂

Biggest Soapbox Commenter

2012: Nick Literski

Commenter Who Started the Most Arguments

2012: DKL

I have to think this was kind of like a lifetime achievement award. If anything, DKL should have been in the most missed personality category.

Most Missed Personality

2012: Steve Evans
2006: Kristine
2005: Steve Evans

Wait, Steve was most missed seven years ago too? Clearly I don’t know my Bloggernacle history well enough.

Steve Evans was more missed the farther east you go. Also, isn’t it odd that Scott B., who I believe lives in the Pacific region, got votes from every region except the Pacific region?

Tarefic Write-in

2012: Worst Comments: Facebook comments on the Pants page

Okay, that’s all I’ve got. In the comments, please feel free to bring up any interesting patterns in the results that I failed to notice, or any other Wheaties/Tarefic related issues, like early nominations for next year!