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Comment by throwaway189262 | Hacker News Reader

Right leaning content is downvoted because the US population leans left.

The centrist view, the average American, would be considered a leftist by conservatives. This is why they think they're getting brigaded everywhere. They are. Their beliefs are unpopular.

The only reason the US Republican party is viable while being so far right is structural voting advantages. That's why they've lost the popular vote almost every time for 30+ years. That's why 50% of senators are Republican when only ~43% of the populations votes R.

On the internet where these artificial advantages aren't present it's much more obvious that Republican policy is broadly unpopular, and conservative opinion is the minority. Or more accurately, the moderate left is actually the center, and the average Republican is substantially far right.

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Your comment would make sense if Reddit and r/politics is an accurate description of the US population.

But I'll have to disagree, since the comment above me suggests that there are a significant number of non-American Reddit users who lean more left than the average American, skewing the upvoting patterns. I'd argue that there are a different set of "artificial advantages" on the internet, such as that.

And when I browsed r/politics during the 2016 and 2020 election seasons, it was clear that Bernie Sanders was the favored candidate by Redditors. However, more moderate politicians like Clinton and Biden actually won the nominations.

And the popular vote count is a reflection of the Electoral College process...if elections were actually decided on the popular vote, campaign strategies would be focused more on cities than rural areas shifting the results.

Redditors lean farther left than the average american. The average internet user is also left of the average american because they trend younger.

But it's also undeniable that the average American leans left. That's why Republicans lose the popular vote in both chambers of congress and the presidency nearly every election. Their positions are unpopular, that's why they get down voted on "mainstream" sites where the user base is large enough to revert to the mean.

And campaign focus outside of urban cores would mean that the average American is even farther left than they appear to be.

Biden is farther right than the average Democrat because he needed to be to win. The structural advantages to Conservatives means the Democratic party needs to run centrist candidates.

In comparison, the same advantages mean the Republican party can still win with extreme right wing candidates. For example, Trump was the first president that never hit 50% approval rating but it was still high enough for him to win and do okay during his second campaign.

This explanation ignores the cabal of moderators which controls all political subreddits, as well as the fact that /r/politics and /r/worldnews are regularly ridiculed in the rest of reddit for being Bernie-Central, to the poinnt that posting about other candidates on the left gets you called a traitor. Anyway that's why I get my politics on /r/anime_titties.

I'm saying internet wide. There's almost 20% more democrats than republicans nationwide. And since young people use internet more, it could be much higher ratio on the net.

If 2/3 of US internet users are left of conservatives, that's why they get downvoted to hell anywhere outside their safe spaces. IMO the crazy moderators on reddit are a result of the left lean, not the cause.

No, websites have different cultures, so each one isn't a proportionate sample of all internet users.

Reddit leaned a lot more right/libertarian before nearly all coservative subreddits were systematically banned under spez and Pao. Spez also enacted more subtle censorship like algorithmic tweaks to keep t_d out off the front page and eventually the creation of /r/popular to keep similarly "undesirable" subreddits from the front page.

Show me a single mainstream website where conservatives don't REEEE about censorship. You won't find one. Because any website large enough to capture a few percent of worldwide web traffic leans left. Because the English speaking world leans left and the republican party is a hard right structure.

The truth means nothing to those that wont listen. The Republican party is a far right monstrosity. The democrats in US are a right leaning party for all practical purposes. Hell, Biden said he would be fine running with a Republican VP.

Your American concept of "left" is still right of centre compared to other countries in the Anglosphere.

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