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The key finding highlighted by the study’s authors—from UC3M, the National University of Singapore (NUS), and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU)—is the strength of ideology as a predictor of preference for one player over the other. In fact, political ideology was the strongest individual predictor, once demographic factors, media use, personality, and cognition were controlled for.

“More liberal respondents preferred Messi, while more conservative respondents preferred Ronaldo. Also noteworthy is the moderating effect of age on ideology: the effect of ideology is more pronounced among younger respondents and weakens to the point of losing statistical significance in older age groups,” explains one of the authors, Teresa Gil López, a professor in the Department of Social Sciences at UC3M and a researcher at the Juan Linz Institute.

The authors of the study clarify that it should not be interpreted in a deterministic manner or as a verdict on fans’ individual preferences. On the contrary, the finding suggests that underlying personal choices are currents and values that influence social and political life.

“The study is not a verdict on anyone's taste, and it is not saying that your politics determines your football preference in some mechanical, inevitable way. What it is saying is something more subtle and, I think, more interesting: that the line between our political identity and our cultural life has become much thinner than most of us realise and that the Messi-Ronaldo debate, which most people experience as purely personal, turns out to be a small window into something much larger about how we see the world,” notes another of the study’s authors, Saifuddin Ahmed of NTU in Singapore.

The author adds that “Most people who have a preference between these two players experience it as their own, as something rooted in specific memories, in matches watched, in styles of play that moved them. And that's real. But underneath that personal layer, our data suggest there is another layer, one connected to values and dispositions that also organise our political lives. The finding doesn't invalidate the personal layer. It just shows it isn't the only one,” concludes Ahmed.

This scientific paper is published on SSRN (Social Science Research Network), an open-access preprint repository from Elsevier that allows researchers to share and download early-stage work for free prior to peer review or formal publication.

Methodology and Global Scope of the Research

To obtain these results, the research team conducted a transnational online survey between April and May 2026. The study included a sample of 10,661 participants selected through quota sampling in 26 countries across six continents. In selecting the countries, priority was given to diversity in soccer culture, economic development, and political systems. Within each country, the samples were balanced by age and gender to reflect the actual distribution of the adult population.

Regarding the measurement, each participant rated Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo on a favorability scale from 1 to 7, with the players presented in random order. The primary outcome analyzed was the intrapersonal difference between the two ratings. The data collection instrument also included additional measures to gather information on political ideology, demographic variables, media consumption habits, and a set of validated personality and cognition items and scales.

Bibliographic reference: Ahmed, Saifuddin; Jaidka, Kokil; Rasul, Muhammad Ehab; and Gil-López, Teresa (2026). Political Identity Beyond Politics: The Messi-Ronaldo Preference Across 26 Countries. May 20. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6803399 UC3M e-Archive: https://hdl.handle.net/10016/50425