Only half of Americans can answer, 'what’s your sign?'
The Ipsos Consumer Tracker asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.
Why we asked: We’ve read a lot of trend pieces over the past few years about young people and some growing or resurgent interest in astrology. We’ve even seen some other people’s surveys with some numbers that had me raise an eyebrow in terms of the reported numbers.
What we found: Based on the Tracker, we can write some eye-popping headlines, too. Younger Americans (18-34) are EIGHT TIMES more likely to have had a tarot card reading in the last year than those 55+. But, um, that’s 8% vs 1%. I guess that’s a market? But otherwise, there aren’t huge differences by age. Younger folks are less likely to say they don’t follow astrology at all (One in four 18- to 34-year-olds vs. one in three 35+).
But only half of Americans even know what their sign is. Does that make it still a good pickup line? Maybe? Maybe something that half of folks (note: 57% of women vs. 41% of men) can answer is actually good odds for a pickup line. One in five say their sign represents them well. Only one in ten say they check their horoscope regularly.
Based on this, I’m calling this “trend” busted. However, I still think Scorpios rule and check to see if Mercury is retrograde when tech starts bugging out.
