Americans Can't Agree Whether Hot Dogs, Tacos, and Hamburgers are 'Sandwiches' According to a New Poll
We're inching dangerously close to National Sandwich Month (in case its omitted from your calendar, it's August), so the public opinion and data company YouGov figured now is as good a time as any to look into the current state of the sandwich in America: First of all, what qualifies, and second, which sandwiches are people's favorites.
"Is a hot dog a sandwich" has been a popular public debate for some time now, so of course, the ballpark staple was one of four foods YouGov specifically asked about to see whether respondents considered them sandwiches at all. A third of people, 34 percent, said "yes" to hot dog as sandwich, significantly below the hamburger (60 percent) and sloppy joe (62 percent), both of which pulled out a majority on the sandwich side. Meanwhile, tacos fared the worst in their quest for sandwichhood, though 15 percent still voted "yes" on taco.
But as for America's favorite sandwich, there was far less debate: Out of the 22 sandwich choices, the grilled cheese was the only one where over half of respondents said they "really like it" (54 percent) while only 7 percent of people said they disliked this gooey goodness. Overall, the grilled cheese was both the most liked and least disliked sandwich, and broken down by region, it finished in the top three in all four corners of the country: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. In the West, grilled cheese ceded the top spot to the turkey sandwich (which finished third nationwide), and in the Northeast, the top spot went to the grilled chicken sandwich (second nationwide) followed by turkey.
The rest of the nationwide top ten are as follows: roast beef, ham, BLT, club, bacon, peanut butter and jelly, and pulled pork. Worth noting, however, is that some damn good sandwich finished low on the list in part because not enough people had tried them. For instance, the Cuban sandwich finished 19th, with a massive 38 percent of respondents saying they'd never had one before. Meanwhile, egg salad finished 12th, with only about 9 percent of people saying they've never had one. However, if you rank by the least amount of dislikes, the Cuban would have finished tenth while egg salad would have dropped to 17th. As a result, one more stat is hidden within this poll: People gotta try more types of sandwiches!
Update 7/30/2019: A previous version of this article included a statistic based on an insufficient sample size and has been removed at the request of YouGov.
