2026-10-12T18:37:06Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33802900 2026-09-15T15:28:05Z portal_1197 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Data for Messi, Ronaldo, and the politics of celebrity elections : voting for the best soccer player in the world Christopher Anderson (120673) Luc Arrondel (24915766) André Blais (686901) Jean-Francois Daoust (24915769) Jean-Francois Laslier (8330163) Karine Van der Straeten (24942970) Soccer players Ronaldo, Cristiano, 1985- Soccer Popularity Messi, Lionel, 1987- Elections Migrated from ePrints It is widely assumed that celebrities are imbued with political capital and the power to move opinion. To understand the sources of that capital in the specific domain of sports celebrity, we investigate the popularity of global soccer superstars. Specifically, we examine players’ success in the Ballon d’Or – the most high profile contest to select the world’s best player. Based on historical election results as well as an original survey of soccer fans, we find that certain kinds of players are significantly more likely to win the Ballon d’Or. Moreover, we detect an increasing concentration of votes on these kinds of players over time, suggesting a clear and growing hierarchy in the competition for soccer celebrity. Further analyses of support for the world’s two best players in 2016 (Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo) show that, if properly adapted, political science concepts like partisanship have conceptual and empirical leverage in ostensibly non-political contests.<br><br>Data record consists of two Stata data files in .tab format and the Stata code used for analysis in raw text format. 2019-08-22T00:00:00Z Dataset Dataset 10.82444/warw.33802900.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Data_for_Messi_Ronaldo_and_the_politics_of_celebrity_elections_voting_for_the_best_soccer_player_in_the_world/33802900 CC BY 4.0