Why does this board lean Democrat?

[Enkel]

@RTFirefly

Again, my problem with this is that the board really was a lot more balanced between left and right in 1999-2000. It wasn’t like we started off firmly liberal.

What got us from there to here was the Bush Administration. What kept us here was that the GOP kept moving further right after Bush left office.

I would argue that what kept you ‘here’ (‘here’ being a strong Democratic bias) is the moderation of the board.

This board allows (doesn’t promote, but allows) some pretty significant disparagement of certain opinions in the name of “fighting ignorance.” It’s acceptable to accuse the holder of those opinions as “selfish” and “intolerant” BUT, should someone accuse the holder of an board-accepted opinion of the same, they would be warned for it.

I also think that those who are not conservative are not in a position to even recognize this because there are many times that things are posted (that I think conservatives disagree with) but no one bothers to point it out because it just isn’t worth the effort.

The SDMB has its own self-sealing logic and that isn’t going to change without a major change in the moderation style of the board. As a result, most moderate Republicans keep their mouth shut and use the board for certain inputs and ignore the rest. Leaving some highly vocal Republicans with strong feelings who enjoy sparing, even in an environment where there is little hope of changing any minds.

[Enkel]

@rhubarbarin

**According to all polls taken here (and as is also evident from the quality of the content and posting), the regular posters on the SDMB have a higher IQ, and are much more educated, than the average population. **According to research done on the American population, intelligent, educated people are far more likely to be liberal, Democrats or Independents, and agnostic/atheist/irreligious.

Obviously we have plenty of intelligent, highly-educated posters who are not liberals or Democrats.

A self-selecting poll with no means of validating the claims? That would be roughly equivalent to anecdotal evidence and not exactly data.

Everyone wants to believe that they are members of some elite group. This board pushes the concept more than most, but the fact is that I’ve seen just as many silly posters (they may be educated, but may not have internalized anything from the learning process) as any other type of posters.

I would be surprised if the average actual verified IQ of the active posters on this board was any different than the average for US adults who are online.

[Shodan]

@Enkel

I would be surprised if the average actual verified IQ of the active posters on this board was any different than the average for US adults who are online.

What’s more to the point, the conservatives on the SDMB are not going to be significantly dumber than the liberals. I would expect the conservatives to have significantly thicker hides, given the differing ways they are treated, but I doubt you can quantify that.

And it’s not because they are conservative - it’s because the ones who can’t tolerate being sniped at left long ago.

Regards,
Shodan

[puddleglum]

@rhubarbarin

According to all polls taken here (and as is also evident from the quality of the content and posting), the regular posters on the SDMB have a higher IQ, and are much more educated, than the average population. According to research done on the American population, intelligent, educated people are far more likely to be liberal, Democrats or Independents, and agnostic/atheist/irreligious.

Obviously we have plenty of intelligent, highly-educated posters who are not liberals or Democrats.

This is just plain untrue. the General Social Survey has shown that the Average republican has an estimated IQ of 100, the average democrat has an estimated IQ of 97.3, and the average independent an average IQ of 94.4. Further the average IQ of conservatives and liberals are identical at 99.4 and 99.2 respectively. However the GSS overstates liberal and democratic IQ because the IQ scores are converted from Wordsum. Cite
Republicans are also better informed about public policy (cite)
As far as education goes people who go to college some or have a bachelors degree are more likely to vote republican while those with a high school diploma or less and post grad degrees are more likely to vote democrat.
cite

As Reagan said, “It is not that our liberal friends are ignorant, it is that they know so much which isn’t so”

[Shodan]

According to research done on the American population, intelligent, educated people are far more likely to be liberal, Democrats or Independents…

No, not really. High school dropouts and those with no college degree tend to be Democrats. Those with a bachelor’s degree tend to be Republican. Those with graduate degrees tend to be Democratic. Cite.

On preview - ninja’ed by puddleglum.

Regards,
Shodan

[bup]

@Shodan

What’s more to the point, the conservatives on the SDMB are not going to be significantly dumber than the liberals.

That’s easier to accept than the dubious claim that because the SDMB believes it’s smart, it is.

However, if we take your implied assertion - SDMB conservatives are on average as intelligent as SDMB liberals - it does nothing to answer the question why the board leans left. One might take it as evidence that there are fewer smart conservatives than smart liberals.

I think conservatives and liberals just tend to have different personality types. Liberals will hang out on message boards. Conservatives can laugh, because while we liberals call ourselves smart, they end up disproportionately running corporations and owning the wealth.

[Der_Trihs]

@RTFirefly

Perhaps, but Rush Limbaugh’s massive audience demonstrates that there are tens of millions of conservatives with plenty of free time during the day.

Considering all the workplaces (including I understand the military) full of people who are force fed him, not really. Just because people listen to him doesn’t mean they want to.

[eschereal]

@puddleglum

Cite

Tagline: “Validating Stereotypes since 2005”

Classic.

[Count_Blucher]

I’ve always thought that we represented a thoughtful true-center message board; not one skewed 30 points to the right because of the volume of people who gobble up the extreme right without thought or question.

A better question might be what conservatives want to drag this board 30 points right on average just to avoid the rightfully earned tag of “extreme”?

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@RTFirefly

Again, my problem with this is that the board really was a lot more balanced between left and right in 1999-2000. It wasn’t like we started off firmly liberal.

I joined the Board in mid-2002. By that time it was already strongly liberal.

I went back and read several threads from the disputed 2000 election, thinking that I would refute you. But to my surprise, you are right–the discussion in 2000 was amazingly even-handed. I noticed a couple of other things:

1. The threads were really short. The longest I could find was less than 100 posts. We had a thread of like 3,000 posts on Clinton versus Obama in the primaries in 2008.

2. The discussion was surprisingly civil and almost neutral. From many posters, I couldn’t discern their candidate preference at all. Those whom I could (you were one) were split about evenly.

So something changed between 2000 and 2002. I have trouble believing it was Bush. He didn’t become particularly polarizing until the run-up to the Iraq invasion. I believe the Board was growing rapidly and naturally attracted liberals because of the link to the column and its host newspapers. As to why the very earliest posters were different, I’m not sure–it was a very small sample size, and when the Board was on AOL (until 1999) that imposed a secondary filter which may have skewed early participation.

[BlankSlate]

@For You

Tagline: “Validating Stereotypes since 2005”

Classic.

Gotta love blog cites. WTF are whiterpeople?

[GIGObuster]

@Bricker

Let’s explore that concept a bit, shall we?

As hinted above, most propositions that are hotly debated here have opposing sides that can each be reasonably held by people of good faith. Unfortunately, because most of the debates are objectively unable to be called conclusively for one side, it’s very difficult to falsify the proposition alluded to by the quotes above: that those who lean left are open to persuasion and that sincere, intelligent and accommodating discussion will carry the day.

But occasionally, a topic comes along that’s a slam dunk for one side or the other. For example, I regard global warming as a slam-dunk for the left. We might reasonably debate the cost-benefit breaks of particular remediation efforts, but the overall theses: that global temperature is rising; that climate change will ensue as a result; that some significant portion of this is tied to human activity – these are all solidly established.

But when a topic arises that’s a slam-dunk for the right, do we see the liberal masses here acknowledging error and withdrawing?

In this thread, the OP excoriates the NRA for opposing the addition of identifying taggants to gunpowder:

As the thread develops, it becomes reasonably clear that the OP’s thesis is flawed in some important respects. The bomb used black powder evidently extracted from fireworks, not modern gunpowder; black powder is simply not a factor in statistically significant crime; and the NRA’s moral failing seems to have morphed from the claimed opposing the use of taggants to the actual one of failing to continue to fund additional research. In short, in my view, the OP’s thesis was thoroughly debunked.

Where do we see the claimed leftist openness to conclusion reached as a result of intelligent discussion? What’s the response when Reality happens to Lean Right?

And of course if I accepted that indeed the OP was moot that makes me chopped liver?

In any case I noticed that there were plenty of anti-science positions coming from the NRA to show that indeed groups like the NRA also deny reality, (and noticeably, ignored by you) just not much on the specific point in opposing the use of taggants in the 90’s, Of course if one defends the NRA with the equivalency of an uncertain Schrodinger like “who knows” what the NRA will do if the science now has made this economical and feasible, I have to say that the position there is depending in uncertainty or just plain ignorance.

We do know that the issue of taggants in that bomber case is moot, but the point for me, besides the other clearly “ignore reality” positions of the NRA, was that times change, not only with taggants but with the weapons of choice from the terrorists.

[Marley23]

The polls here don’t mean very much. But if we take it for granted that the board leans liberal (not exactly Democratic), I think the reason is probably a combination of user demographics and George W. Bush.

[RTFirefly]

@Freddy_the_Pig

I joined the Board in mid-2002. By that time it was already strongly liberal.

I went back and read several threads from the disputed 2000 election, thinking that I would refute you. But to my surprise, you are right–the discussion in 2000 was amazingly even-handed. I noticed a couple of other things:

1. The threads were really short. The longest I could find was less than 100 posts. We had a thread of like 3,000 posts on Clinton versus Obama in the primaries in 2008.

2. The discussion was surprisingly civil and almost neutral. From many posters, I couldn’t discern their candidate preference at all. Those whom I could (you were one) were split about evenly.

So something changed between 2000 and 2002. I have trouble believing it was Bush. He didn’t become particularly polarizing until the run-up to the Iraq invasion. I believe the Board was growing rapidly and naturally attracted liberals because of the link to the column and its host newspapers. As to why the very earliest posters were different, I’m not sure–it was a very small sample size, and when the Board was on AOL (until 1999) that imposed a secondary filter which may have skewed early participation.

Your join date is August 2002. Bush started selling the war in earnest within weeks of your arrival here; I’d say the serious sales job started with Cheney’s speech of August 26, 2002, and once we got into September, it was quickly all Iraq, all the time.

I also recall some pretty intense debates over the Patriot Act, and the bait-and-switch and scare tactics surrounding that, in the fall of 2001.

@Enkel

I would argue that what kept you ‘here’ (‘here’ being a strong Democratic bias) is the moderation of the board.

Ummm, you’ve been here less than a year. How would you be able to have a sense of the evolution of this board?

[XT]

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Ummm, you’ve been here less than a year. How would you be able to have a sense of the evolution of this board?
[/QUOTE]

I was a lurker for several years before my dad started posting on this board, and it was several years later that I started, so it’s certainly possible that someone could see the evolution of the board by only ‘been here less than a year’.

There are a number of reasons I think the board leans left (not ‘Democrat’), most of which have already been addressed. My take, FWIW is you see a lot of more marginalized groups on this board, including a heavy libertarian streak which you don’t find in a lot of places…and, lets face it, in the US, left wing folks (not people who lean left, but the real left wing) are a pretty marginalized and attacked group. Here, 'dopers get their revenge.

As noted by others, the articles from Cecil I think attracted most of the old timers (it’s what originally attracted me, and I still read them every day, even the old ones I haven’t seen in years), are a common thread as well. Also, IMHO this board has a high learning curve…it’s not a very welcoming place for most newbies to get started, and it’s a shark pit for anyone who doesn’t conform to the boards overall corporate culture. If you don’t fit in to one of the niches here it’s pretty difficult to work up the gumption to post in the face of some of the feeding frenzies I’ve seen and participated in (9/11 Truthers, for instance). You have to really, really WANT to post here if you have ideas or concepts that deviate from the main board culture. If you DO lean left you will, simply put, have an easier time fitting in here than if you don’t, so it’s self reinforcing…over time, what few newbies we get are either weeded out because they don’t fit in, are stubborn and stick it out in the face of hostility and insults, or basically already fit in at some level.

I don’t think that most 'dopers really realize what a hostile environment this place is to those people who don’t fit in, especially politically in GD, but to a lesser degree in most of the other forums as well. And politics is only one facet of our corporate culture here…you have to fit in at many different levels to get by here, unless you are incredibly stubborn and/or just like to fight and argue…and, of course, if you do then you have to worry about crossing the mods and the rules and being banned off the board. Unpopular posters, I think, get special mod attention because posters tend to report them more, so it can be a vicious cycle.

[eschereal]

@BlankSlate

Gotta love blog cites. WTF are whiterpeople?

Ever see Charlton Heston in The Omega Man? Those were some rather whiterpeople.

[Bricker]

@GIGObuster

And of course if I accepted that indeed the OP was moot that makes me chopped liver?

No – but of course you weren’t the original poster.

And – quite frankly – your concession as to the mootness of the OP has consistently been surrounded by lots of other bad stuff about the NRA. You seem intent to drive home the point that while the OP might possibly have been wrong about his claim, there was plenty of other reason to dislike the NRA, and readers shouldn’t forget that!

You do that again here:

In any case I noticed that there were plenty of anti-science positions coming from the NRA to show that indeed groups like the NRA also deny reality, (and noticeably, ignored by you) just not much on the specific point in opposing the use of taggants in the 90’s, Of course if one defends the NRA with the equivalency of an uncertain Schrodinger like “who knows” what the NRA will do if the science now has made this economical and feasible, I have to say that the position there is depending in uncertainty or just plain ignorance.

We do know that the issue of taggants in that bomber case is moot, but the point for me, besides the other clearly “ignore reality” positions of the NRA, was that times change, not only with taggants but with the weapons of choice from the terrorists.

I grant you concede the point… but you do so while making every effort you can to still advance the cause of the left.

[samclem]

@XT

I was a lurker for several years before my dad started posting on this board, and it was several years later that I started, so it’s certainly possible that someone could see the evolution of the board by only ‘been here less than a year’.

There are a number of reasons I think the board leans left (not ‘Democrat’), most of which have already been addressed. My take, FWIW is you see a lot of more marginalized groups on this board, including a heavy libertarian streak which you don’t find in a lot of places…and, lets face it, in the US, left wing folks (not people who lean left, but the real left wing) are a pretty marginalized and attacked group. Here, 'dopers get their revenge.

As noted by others, the articles from Cecil I think attracted most of the old timers (it’s what originally attracted me, and I still read them every day, even the old ones I haven’t seen in years), are a common thread as well. Also, IMHO this board has a high learning curve…it’s not a very welcoming place for most newbies to get started, and it’s a shark pit for anyone who doesn’t conform to the boards overall corporate culture. If you don’t fit in to one of the niches here it’s pretty difficult to work up the gumption to post in the face of some of the feeding frenzies I’ve seen and participated in (9/11 Truthers, for instance). You have to really, really WANT to post here if you have ideas or concepts that deviate from the main board culture. If you DO lean left you will, simply put, have an easier time fitting in here than if you don’t, so it’s self reinforcing…over time, what few newbies we get are either weeded out because they don’t fit in, are stubborn and stick it out in the face of hostility and insults, or basically already fit in at some level.

I don’t think that most 'dopers really realize what a hostile environment this place is to those people who don’t fit in, especially politically in GD, but to a lesser degree in most of the other forums as well. And politics is only one facet of our corporate culture here…you have to fit in at many different levels to get by here, unless you are incredibly stubborn and/or just like to fight and argue…and, of course, if you do then you have to worry about crossing the mods and the rules and being banned off the board. Unpopular posters, I think, get special mod attention because posters tend to report them more, so it can be a vicious cycle.

If you get banned here, it isn’t because you are conservative or espouse unpopular opinions. You get banned here because you fuck up. You insult people or can’t follow a few simple rules.

[John_Mace]

I don’t see a left bias in the mods. I think that’s conservative persecution complex.

Not sure why so few people seem to recognize that a large reason this board leans left is we have a lot of non-American posting here, and they tend to lean left in any American sense of the term.

Oh, and I bet libertarians have the highest average IQ.

[GIGObuster]

@Bricker

No – but of course you weren’t the original poster.

And – quite frankly – your concession as to the mootness of the OP has consistently been surrounded by lots of other bad stuff about the NRA. You seem intent to drive home the point that while the OP might possibly have been wrong about his claim, there was plenty of other reason to dislike the NRA, and readers shouldn’t forget that!

Well, I can grant you that on that particular thread those other items were not much to the point, but the whoppers that are still pushed by the NRA are more appropriate to point them out here in this tread, particularly when we are dealing with an item on who is more grounded in reality.

And yes, readers should not forget that.

As a guy that has experience in social studies and history I have to once again point out that I see that line of “reality has a liberal bias” or why this board leans Democrat as just the fortunes of the current situation, I still remember how Bob Dole wondered what party he should join when he started his political career, his mentor recommended the Republicans, seeing how most of the current Republicans virtually spat on him should be a good clue that what is happening in the USA now is that many moderate and fact based Republicans are still not internalizing that the current crop of republicans in congress are not really representing them.

IMHO the fortunes of history are giving an advantage to liberals or Democrats in many important subjects and more related to the point here is also the issue that a good number of reasonable Republicans do not like what they are seeing and are moving away from the current party. I do think that a good number of Dopers that are (or were) republicans are reacting to what the current Republicans are doing like scientist Kerry Emmanuel did:

Reality Bites

And so we get the current lean that we see.