>The researchers don't claim a causal relationship between these different factors — donating to losing political candidates doesn't make you prefer Crystal Pepsi, for example — but rather speculate that there is an "unobserved intervening variable" that explains both factors.

Being older, poorer, and "out of touch" with what's fashionable, politically, culturally, and market wise -- because you have other problems and you're at the very far side demographically of anybody marketeers, press, etc. attempts to even influence...