‘Our name is bronies, for we are many’
It’s somehow appropriate, given the news earlier this week that Hasbro is expanding its My Little Pony brand with Equestria Girls, that ICv2 should draw attention to the 2013 Brony Herd Census, which is exactly what it sounds like: a tally of how many male devotees there are of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
So, just how many bronies are there in the United States? As many as 12.4 million, if we go by this survey. Or, in the words of the website, “Thus, we can state with a 95% confidence that between 4.0% and 6.8% of the internet-using US population strongly identify as bronies, or approximately 7 to 12.4 million people.”
I bombed my only statistics class in college, so I’m in no position to scrutinize the methodology, but considering the number of My Little Pony conventions and the countless pins on this brony meetup group map, I don’t have any difficulty accepting 12.4 million.
The survey asked a random online sampling, using an ascending scale from 1 to 5, “How strongly would you identify yourself as a ‘brony,’ a fan of the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?” Those who answered with 4 or 5 were considered hardcore fans, thus providing the bronies estimate.
Among some of the other interesting statics gathered from more than 21,000 respondents: 84 percent are male; 79 percent are between 15 and 25 years old (the mean age is 20.19); 17.7 percent self-identify as furries; and 17.7 percent self identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (as compared to 6.4 percent for the general population).