CHARLESTON, W.Va. – In a survey of almost 650 West Virginia residents taken last month, 72% of respondents reported having Netflix or other similar streaming services in their homes.

Of those households making more than $40,000 per year, 77% reported having streaming while 67% of households making less than $40,000 per year also had the service.

“While the public dialogue continues regarding the need for more broadband in rural states, this data shows a large percentage of West Virginians are actively utilizing what they have,” explained Curtis Wilkerson of Orion Strategies.

Of the 97% of West Virginians who reported having a television in their homes, 56% reported having cable service and 32% reported having satellite service. A significant gap exists between households who earn more than $40,000 per year versus those under that threshold.  Sixty-one percent of television-owning West Virginia households that make more than $40,000 a year have cable, while only 48% of those making under $40,000 per year do. The same spread existed for those with satellite service – 38% of those over $40,000 and 24% for those under.

Education attainment level also consistently showed that the higher the level of education, the more likely the responding household was to have streaming services. Of respondents with less than a high school diploma, 57% reported having the service in their homes. That amount increased to 84% of those with a post college degree.

“Not only do we see disparities in households broken down by annual income and education attainment, but we also found variances in the way that people of different political parties receive their entertainment,” continued Wilkerson.

When cross-tabulated by party registration breakdown, 62% of Democrats reported having cable television service in their homes as opposed to only 54% of Republicans.  Inversely, 39% of Republicans reported having satellite service compared to only 27% of Democrats.  Internet streaming services remained consistent across all political party registrations. 

“Social media remains popular in the Mountain State,” said Wilkerson.  “But there are definite distinctions in its use when broken down by gender.”

Sixty-nine percent of West Virginia respondents utilize social media – with 73% of them actively visiting or posting on Facebook. Twitter was actively used by 16% of West Virginia social media users while Reddit only saw 7%.

The largest demographic gap for social media users in West Virginia was gender.  Seventy-nine percent of women in the state reported using social media actively, as opposed to only 57% of men.  Facebook sees 81% of its female users posting or checking the site and only 61% of its male users doing so.