Pumpkin pie or apple? Which Thanksgiving pie Americans picked this year, based on gender, age, and politics

• A new YouGov poll highlights the most popular Thanksgiving pies of 2024.
• More women prefer pumpkin pie, a trend that may have a scientific explanation.
• Politics is not a great pie choice predictor, but there are some trends in pecan versus sweet potato.

There is a clear winner in the Thanksgiving pie wars this year.

According to a November 20 YouGov online poll of 9,900 adults across the US, pumpkin pie took first place for favorite pie pick, with 29% of the vote nationwide.

Second place goes to apple pie (20%) while smaller crowds of Americans prefer pecan pie (14%), sweet potato pie (9%), and chocolate pie (9%).

Then there is the 6% share of the survey respondents that chose “I don’t like to eat pie on Thanksgiving.” Fine, more pie for us.

Pie preferences divided by gender and age

If you’re trying to guess what kind of pie your guests might like best, gender provides one small indication.

Roughly one in every three women (32%) surveyed this year was a pumpkinhead, preferring to eat pumpkin pie. Male survey respondents, however, were almost equally likely to pick apple (24%) or pumpkin (26%).

There may be a biological reason for those taste differences. Scientific research suggests that about 35% of women in the US are supertasters, while only 15% of men can say the same. So it’s possible that a larger share of female pie eaters may gravitate to the comparatively subtle, savory flavors of a pumpkin pie while more men enjoy sweeter apple pies.

According to this survey, younger people also tend to like apple pie more than older people, with 29% of respondents ages 18 to 29 making apple pie their first choice.

With age comes an increasing appreciation for pumpkin pie, but whether that’s by tradition or through a change in palate with age is unclear: 30- to 44-year-olds were almost evenly split on picking pumpkin or apple for their first choice, while folks from 45 to 64 chose pumpkin a third of the time, and 38% of people over 65 ask for pumpkin.

Pumpkin pie has been the first Thanksgiving pie of choice for a while in the US, but YouGov polls from 2020 and 2022 suggest that apple pie has been gaining ground against pecan pie.

Pumpkin pie unites the table

You’ll have less luck trying to guess people’s political alliances by their pie choices.

Equal shares of Democrats and Republicans surveyed picked apple pie as their top flavor (23%), and roughly a third of all respondents nationwide — Democrats (28%), Republicans (30%), and independents (30%) — enjoy pumpkin pie the best.

More Republicans in the survey favored pecan pie than Democrats (16% versus 12%), and similarly small numbers reflect a sweet potato pie difference: It was the first pick of 12% of Democrats versus 8% of Republicans surveyed.

More uniting than any pie flavor this year? Shopping. About half of YouGov’s Thanksgiving survey respondents said they plan to do at least some holiday shopping during the week after their Thanksgiving feast.