Once and for all, we can finally put the Taylor ham versus pork roll debate to rest.

Alright, probably not.

Nonetheless, over the past week, we tallied more than 70,000 votes in our quest to definitively examine the breadth and depth of loyalty to the two prevailing terms for New Jersey's most prized salted pig product. We received votes from all 565 municipalities in New Jersey

We analyzed the results in a number of ways and found that the seemingly even divide between Taylor ham and pork roll is no myth - New Jersey is almost dead evenly split on the issue.

But who won? Well it depends on how you look at it.

If we just take the popular vote, pork roll wins handily. More than 38,000 votes were logged for pork roll, which is the technical term for the product in the federal government's eyes.

About 32,000 votes were cast for Taylor ham, the original brand name for the product for 50 years, before regulators forced a change around the turn of the 20th century.

Jump to the final results map

But a popularity contest doesn't hold much statistical weight, and may just show that New Jersey's pork roll aficionados are more active online.

So we decided to turn to New Jersey's upcoming presidential primary rules for a bit more guidance. As in most states, Democrats and Republicans have different ways of awarding delegates in New Jersey.

Republicans award delegates here on a winner-take-all basis. That is, whoever wins the primary takes all the delegates. So we applied that on a municipal level to our Taylor ham/pork roll fight -- awarding a point to each term for every municipality won.

The result? Pork roll once again wins, this time fairly handily. Here are those results, by county:

The results change, however, if you award things proportionally, as the Democratic party does in New Jersey.

Northern New Jersey carries the majority of the state's population, so a straight geographic win for pork roll is a bit misleading. So for another look, we applied the percentage of the vote for each term, by town, to each municipality's actual population and re-tabulated it.

Analyzing the data this way produces a win for John Taylor and his band of supporters. Under this more refined analysis, Taylor ham emerges with 4.56 million people to pork roll's 4.30 million.

So does that leave us back where we started? Not entirely.

Ardent supporters of either term were likely to take their choice to the grave regardless of what we determined.

But one thing we can more definitively show with our analysis is where the border of Taylor Ham and pork roll country meet.

According to our voters, the border runs across along the border of Middlesex and Union counties before cutting straight through Somerset and Hunterdon counties, roughly along Interstate-78.

While there's certainly disputed territory, the line was fairly distinct throughout voting and did not move much at all as votes came in. Move the slider below to the left and right to compare maps.

Generally, New Jersey's regional dialects or sports allegiances will cut along the Keith Line, the rigid line that runs from southeast to northwest across the state, once separated the territories of East and West Jersey and which visibly forms the eastern border of Burlington County today.

But the Taylor ham/pork roll line is farther north. Pitted against the borders of North, Central and South Jersey (above) from our analysis last year, it is almost identical to the border of North and Central Jersey.

So while Central Jersey generally sides with the north, it appears on the issue of salty swine specialties, they side with the south and call it pork roll.

Now obviously, none of this is strictly scientific. We're applying statistical analysis to a completely subjective and amorphous topic.

But let the record show that the people of New Jersey have spoken. The dispute may never die, but the borders have been drawn. This project produced 70,000 votes, gathered more than 25,000 Facebook shares and thousands of tweets on Twitter, replete with...colorful and passionate language.

So if nothing else, this project has shown New Jersey is passionate about the question of Taylor ham or pork roll. So next time you're traveling through the Garden State, perhaps consult the map before you order our native pig product.

Otherwise, buyer beware.

View the final results on the map below

Click on towns for voting details.

Stephen Stirling may be reached at sstirling@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @sstirling. Find him on Facebook.