Every State's Favorite Spider-Man Reveals Surprising Top Choice Across the U.S.

Using Twitter's geotagging function and a series of keyword searches, the staff at betonline.ag have determined the favorite live-action Spider-Man of each of the 50 U.S. states. While this is the kind of thing that could theoretically have been done anytime, this year in particular seems like a good time to do it, since the run-up to Spider-Man: No Way Home has included a ton of speculation that Tom Holland's Peter Parker would be joined by alternate universe versions played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, leading to a ton of chatter around the idea of who is the definitive (or at least best-loved) Spider-Man of all. 

The actual results may or may not surprise you: Tobey Maguire is the overall winner, with 22 states going his way. Tom Holland comes in second with 16 states, and Andrew Garfield takes 12. While the middle of the country is more or less a mixed bag, there are definitely regional preferences that come out pretty clearly.

The western U.S. and the northeast both go for Maguire, while the Midwest favors Holland and the southeast is heavily weighted toward Garfield. You can see the map below.

Of course, the closeness of this map might be the electoral college effect. That is, since Maguire is the winner in populous states like California, New York, and Texas, it's very likely he has significantly more individual "votes" than the other Spider-Men, but the decision to break it up by state hides that overall advantage, and makes the "contest" look closer.

The map used geotagged Twitter data dated within the 30 days before its publication, tracking tweets, hashtags,a nd keyword phrases about who is the best live-action Spider-Man. According to its creators, keyword phrases like "best Spider-Man" "Tobey Maguire best Spider-Man," "Tom Holland best Spider-Man," "Andrew Garfield best Spider-Man," and others like that, were tracked in every state, accounting for over 200,000 total tweets.

The staff at betonline.ag use trends software with direct access to geotagged twitter data in order to draw conclusions. As you might expect form their site's name, they generally do sports-based maps, however when big entertainment events come along they will sometimes weigh in, since aspects of big entertainment stories, too, can be prop bets in Vegas and elsewhere.