Pop vs Soda: What do we call soft drinks? MD and VA say Soda.

What do Americans call their soft drinks? There is an app for that. No, there isn’t but there is a map which was created by Matthew Campbell and Prof. Greg Plumb of East Central University in Oklahoma that depicts user-submitted data on Pop Vs. Soda.

So what do you call it? Pop or soda? You’ll definitely never hear a Washingtonian refer to soft drinks as “Coke.” Not going to happen. Well let’s see. Where do we stand on the issue?  The Washington, DC metropolitan area includes states, Virginia and Maryland and the District of Columbia.  Unfortunately, the District of Columbia wasn’t represented on the map. Great, now DC residents have even more ammunition for their argument of “Taxation without representation”. They’re not even included in a soda vs. pop count. What has the world come to?

In Virginia there were a total of 2,387 respondents. The majority of residents with more than 59% (1417) said they call soft drinks, “soda” (see map on the left). The state outline is mostly yellow/brown which indicated “soda” on their large national survey map.Surprisingly, 26% said coke (how embarrassing) while even less 6% said pop. I’m pretty sure my family would have to vote in the “other” column. In our home, we call it “sodie”. In public we call it soda. I think people would think we were speaking a foreign language if we asked for “sodie”.

In Maryland with a total of 1,985 respondents, even more folks, 78% (1547) use the term “soda”. Less than 3% said pop. On the map, Maryland is almost entirely brown.

So the majority of folks in this area say, “soda”. That seems pretty normal to me. What do you call it?

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