Here are the results to the 2026 demographic survey. We had 1,357 people take the survey, after filtering out likely bots and trolls and some really determined racists. It's down from the last time we did this, but Reddit is always playing with the algorithm so I suspect that is part of it. People may also just be more cautious of online surveys and such.
You can download the full report here but some of the things that stood out to me were:
General Demographics
- The Male/Female ratio of users is about 55% to 41%, which has been holding pretty consistent since we started this in 2022. I'm glad it's closer to an event split than a lot of online communities.
- We're getting a bit older. 35-44 is our largest age bracket now, though not by much. Last time it was 25-34 with 41% of the users.
- Users are largely white (72%), which is slightly down from last time.
- Users are well educated (65% holding a Bachelor's degree or above). This is slightly up from 2024.
- A whopping 63% of you have no kids.
- 59% of the r/Phoenix households are making $100K or more, which is up from last time.
- 26% of you are natives, and 39% have lived here more than 10 years.
- Once again California is the place most people moved here from. Out of The Country was the 3rd most common answer, followed by Texas and Illinois.
Political Stats
- Political Views averaged out at 2.53 which is slightly more liberal than last time (2.81). It got a little more conservative in 2024 than 2022, so it's interesting to see it swing back.
- Breaking political view out by gender shows women are a little over a half-point more liberal than men.
- The Top Three issues of concern across everyone who responded were (in order) Daily Cost of Living, Climate Change (heat), and Drought (water).
- If you break out the people more liberal than the subreddit average, the top issues are: Daily Cost of Living, Climate Change, and Drought. Given the liberal leaning of the overall data it's not too surprising this lines up.
- If you break out the people more conservative than the average, the top issues are: Daily Cost of Living, Crime, and Housing. Crime surprised me here as that was not this big of an issue in previous years.
- Everyone agrees the Cost of Living is the biggest issue, by a lot. Very few people seem worried about Election Security overall, which is interesting given all the news and fighting about election results nationally and in AZ.
- If you look at difference between how liberal leaning people ranked the concerns versus our conservative voters, liberal voters are a lot more worried about Climate Change and Law Enforcement, and a lot less worried about Crime and Illegal Immigration. They're not that different in ranking most of the rest of the issues.
- Daily Cost of Living 0
- Climate Change +7
- Drought +1
- Housing -1
- Schools 0
- Law Enforcement +5
- Air Quality 0
- Homelessness 0
- Crime -7
- Election Security -1
- Illegal Immigration -5
Living Here
- 54% said they were probably/definitely not going to move in the next few years, vs 21% who said they were. This is a small shift to the negative over last time.
- 26% felt Very Good/Pretty Good about our future, while 29% felt Very Bad/Pretty Bad about it. This is a BIG shift to the negative from last time, and may be the largest shift in the survey from last time.
Subreddit Stuff
These were new questions this time so no baseline from 2024 to compare it to.
- 51% of you visit here at least Daily, and 5% of you look here just when breaking news is happening.
- Local News, Events, and Food & Dining are the most popular categories of contents listed. Though Weather was a huge write-in in the Other category.
For next time...
Here are some of the things people suggested we will try to add/change if we do this again:
- Add Laveen as a city
- Review Sexual Orientation categories to rename/expand
- Change political leaning to Left, Moderate, Right.
- Reduce / revise the political topic list to remove least controversial items
If you have any other suggestions, or any other data jumped out at you let me know.
Thanks to everyone who took part.
(edit: you can also download the full dataset here)
