Yankees Rumors: Survey shows Yankees more popular than Mets, gap widening

Yankees rumors have been absolutely crazy this offseason, with the New York Yankees' near half-billion dollar free agent spending spree prompting many New Yorkers into expecting a twenty-eight World Series championship come October.

This, along with recent history, seems to be swaying the popularity contest between the Yankees and their cross-city rivals, the New York Mets, firmly into the Bronx Bombers' favor.

As reported by Andrew Marchand of ESPNNewYork.com, the statisticians at FiveThirtyEight.com have begun work on explaining a widening gap in popularity amongst New Yorkers between the Yankees and Mets -- evidenced by a Quinnipiac poll that said New Yorkers would back the Yankees 59 percent to 37 in a hypothetical Subway Series.

Delving into the numbers, the folks at FiveThirtyEight.com came up with the following assessment -- "the Mets haven’t made the playoffs since 2006, and the fan base in New York has slowly slid toward the pinstripes. The 22 percentage-point gap in the most recent Quinnipiac survey was the second largest found. The Yankees held their largest lead in the Quinnipiac poll taken about midway through the 1998 season, when it had been 10 years since the Mets made the playoffs."

The data also shows that the New York Mets "fall by an average of about two more points behind the Yankees in a hypothetical Subway Series" every year that they fail to make the playoffs.

The New York Yankees have been to the MLB Playoffs five times during the New York Mets' current playoff drought from 2007-13. The Yankees also won their 27th World Series championship in 2009 -- 25 more than the two championships (1969, 1986) the Mets have won in their 53-year history.

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