Do Republicans really not like the Beatles? Facebook releases voters' tastes.

We’re told that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but what planets do Democratic and Republican supporters in the midterm elections come from?

Culturally speaking, they sometimes hail from completely different worlds, Facebook revealed in a set of charts on Tuesday. Democrats, for instance, groove to the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, and Alicia Keys. Republicans vastly prefer the country scene: Miranda Lambert and her husband, Blake Shelton, as well as the ever popular “king of country,” George Strait.

Facebook pulled its data from users who “like” the campaign pages of any Democrat or Republican candidate running for governor, the US Senate, or the House. The data compare users’ other likes – such as TV shows and books – and highlight where Republican and Democrat supporters most differ, and where they agree.

For instance, tastes differ most widely when it comes to music and books, less so with TV shows and destinations or landmarks. Favorite books among Democratic supporters are “The Great Gatsby,” “The Color Purple,” and “The Hobbit,” while Republican backers are big fans of “Heaven is for Real” and – no surprise here – “Atlas Shrugged.”

In terms of destinations and landmarks, Democrats want to zoom to the top of the Empire State Building, while Republicans like bonding with the Founding Fathers, or at least one of them, at the home of George Washington in Mt. Vernon, Va. On the other hand, everyone really likes the idea of summering on the Jersey Shore or visiting the Kennedy Space Center Complex.

TV viewing reveals some predictable differences, with Republican supporters lining up behind “Duck Dynasty” and Democrats tuning in to comedy “news” shows “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” But again, there’s a lot of commonality in TV land: “The Big Bang Theory,” “Two and a Half Men,” and “The Office” are apparently purple shows that appeal to both reds and blues.

And even in the “polarized” music scene, Democrats and Republicans get all bipartisan over singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.

The comparisons are cultural curiosity, yes, but they can also translate into real ad revenue for Facebook and strategic advantage for political candidates, says Edward Erikson, of the strategic communications firm MacWilliams Sanders Erikson.

“From the campaign perspective, this type of data is very helpful in building psychographic profiles of likely supporters,” says Mr. Erikson in an e-mail. 

One of the features of Facebook advertising, he explains, is that it allows people to target ads based on pages that users like and to narrowly cast messages to those unique audiences. 

For example, a Democratic candidate running for the US House in Iowa could target people 18 and older in their district who listen to the Beatles. The only people who would see the ads would be Beatles fans.

“The more information that is available about people – their consumption habits and ideological predisposition – the more effectively campaigns can communicate, connect, and build support. And ultimately win campaigns,” Erikson writes.

Last week, Facebook released an interactive political map of the United States, comparing candidates in the congressional and governor races by the number of “likes” they have on their campaign pages. The company claims that in the past three months, 22 million Facebook users in the US had 150 million interactions about the coming midterm elections.