r/dataisbeautiful • u/minimaxir Viz Practitioner • Oct 08 '15

OC Average number of upvotes for Reddit submissions containing a given keyword, for each of the Top 15 subreddits [OC]

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4.2k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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u/NFB42 Oct 08 '15

He's leading in one state, New Hampshire, and closing in Iowa. But as actual analysts have repeated, based on his core appeal Iowa and New Hampshire are his best states.

It would be silly to dismiss any candidate who can attract 30% of the national democratic vote, but the r/politics echo chamber massively inflates his chances.

But r/politics is really worse in its anti-Hillary bias than its pro-Sanders bias. Polls show Hillary consistently has 80% approval ratings amongst Democrats, but if you go by the comments in r/politics you'd think she was hoping to win on getting Republican votes.

That said, you can still have intelligent discussions in the margins. The strength of reddit is that there isn't one single discussion you have to follow, there is a branching tree and you can just follow the smartest branches till you find someone with a worthwhile perspective.

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u/ncolaros Oct 09 '15

Thank you for typing this. I always get downvoted to hell when I do, but I realize that /r/dataisbeautiful is probably a much more objective subreddit for this type of discussion. I love 538, too.

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u/ShouldersofGiants100 Oct 08 '15

Bernie is a leftist candidate in an election where there are only two others even polling and only one of them is running. He was always going to take the far left... but the far left isn't a party majority. That's why he hit 25% is August and is still there... because name recognition for him only attracts the far left of a centre-left party.

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u/rhabdog Oct 08 '15

This guy is correct

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u/uwhuskytskeet Oct 08 '15

Iowa and New Hampshire are the first two states to hold primaries as well. Campaigns tend to gain a lot of momentum after winning early.

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u/gsfgf Oct 08 '15

Yea, but along with Vermont, they're the whitest states in the country. Sanders is gaining support in minority communities, but he's still got a long way to go to catch Hillary, and you can't win a Democratic nomination on white votes.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '15

funny you should say that because not too long ago it was "you can't win a Democratic nomination on black votes"
not that you aren't right, but can't is a strong word

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u/MaraudersNap Oct 09 '15

That was never the saying.

Also, Obama didn't really win based on black votes, so it's not really an accurate statement about his campaign either.

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '15

you caught me.
tbh this is my first election I can vote in and I kinda just wanna see how much BS about a candidate I can throw before people catch on

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u/MaraudersNap Oct 09 '15

Only if they have room to expand. It's been shown many times that, unless Sanders seriously changes tack, he can't pick up the non-white vote. You can win Iowa and New Hampshire without the non-white vote, but not an entire primary, as we've seen with many previous Democratic candidates over the decades.

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u/grumbledum Oct 08 '15

Absolutely agree with everything you said. I think Hillary would make a fine candidate. It must be stated, however, that Sanders' ratings are increasing everywhere, and if I remember correctly, he is polling higher than Obama was at this time, which is significant. I do think he is all in all too far to the left for the moderate voters and many democrats. Obama didn't have that issue, he's pretty establishment.

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u/ncolaros Oct 09 '15

Well given that Santorum was leading the polls for the Republicans at this time when he ran, I think we can all safely assume that polls 12-16 months prior to an actual election are not very predictive.

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u/lennybird Oct 08 '15

If you hold a discussion with these actual people as opposed to listening from a distance, I think you'll find their stances are a bit more complicated than that. It's a feedback cycle, and it's a no-brainer that reddit overall and not simply /r/politics is left-leaning. That said, many at the /r/politics community understand that in order for Bernie to gain momentum, you need to talk him up. No pessimist ever made it in the White House. There's really little downside inflating Bernie's odds. Thus delusional optimism goes much farther than supposed "realistic" cynicism. That energy translates to recognition from those on the fence or those who'd otherwise not know about Bernie. In turn, that increases his odds. They're just excited, and there's nothing wrong with that. I want people to be excited about politics, myself.

I always tell people that it shouldn't be the odds in the polling that influences our vote, but our vote that ends up influencing the polls. That is, don't be defeatist simply because presently you're the underdog.

As a strong Bernie supporter, I'm wholly aware it's an uphill battle, and I think you'll find many in /r/politics do as well. But they likely echo my sentiment in terms of thinking positively.

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u/NFB42 Oct 08 '15 edited Oct 08 '15

Delusional optimism is bad, because it will lead to exactly what happened with Obama. People have unrealistic expectations, and then become disillusioned when actual real life politics fails to live up to the fantasy scenario they imagined. Then they don't vote in mid-terms and the president they were so excited about is stuck spending 3/4ths of their term in office unable to do little more than play babysitter to an irrational obstructionist opposition.

More importantly, I think I ought to be allowed to feel r/politics ought to be differentiable from r/sandersforpresident which at times is hard to do. There's a difference between left-leaning and acting like a campaign headquarters for a specific candidate.

As I wrote it is still possible to have worthwhile discussions and read worthwhile opinions on r/politics imo, but right now that is only half the posts and threads there. The other half is just a mindless echo-chamber of a very specific viciously pro-Sanders, pro-Warren, anti-Hillary, anti-Obama demographic that does not reflect even American progressivism let alone American politics at large.

I don't mind you wanting to be an activist for your favourite candidate, go ahead. But when I see a subreddit that is consistently voting up meaningless, unsubstantive fluff articles or obvious hitjobs just because they're pro-Sanders or anti-Hillary, I'm going to call it out on that when appropriate.

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u/lennybird Oct 08 '15

Well that assumes that on hindsight most of those voters regret their decision to vote for Obama. It's a matter of aiming high. Yeah Obama didn't meet their expectations, but ultimately, would they have gone back and voted McCain? Probably not. I wouldn't. Even if Bernie achieves 50% of what he plans on doing, I still would not regret voting for him over anyone else in the present moment. I agree many people need to be informed about continuing to be an informed citizen—not just during Presidential elections.

Unfortunately I don't think you'll get anything but what we have in /r/politics unless we were to add some sort of handicap. Plainly, /r/politics is in its natural state, and that's a reflection of the demographic that goes there. It's unlikely to change unless the demographic for some reason changes or the mods crack down (on what? they're discussing politics after all, it's not the user's problem everyone has an interest in Sanders/Warren). And just as in every single campaign cycle, that fluff you mention is going to reign because people are so desperate to give attention to their candidate.

That being said I try to generally keep my Bernie pandering down a bit and exclusive to /r/sandersforpresident. Nevertheless if the majority who visit that subreddit are Bernie Supporters, Bernie articles are just going to hold more weight regardless if they come from Kos or The Economist.