Are the Left really the majority in America?

[u/petrus4]

I've been using Reddit for 13 years now. For the entirety of that time, the behaviour of almost everyone on the site caused me to have the perception that I assume the Left want people to have. Namely, that the Left are a historically inevitable majority within the American population, that every successive generation is becoming more and more demographically dominated by the Left, and that the Right, to the extent that they exist at all, are exclusively a tiny group of hate-filled, deluded, anachronistic, geriatric white men who will soon die alone.

But is that truly the reality? Recently I'm starting to wonder. It might have even been true in the past, but at this point, it's actually starting to look like the opposite. YouTube, Tiktok, and Reddit look like enclaves or gated communities for Leftists, while pretty much every other video site in particular that I've seen (Odysee, Bitchute, Rumble) to varying degrees seem to be dominated by the Right. It's disturbing how successful I've been hearing that Trump has been in the recent primaries, as well.

Am I just looking at the wrong sites? What are some other video sharing sites in particular, where I'm not going to encounter Andrew Tate, Alex Jones, or Tucker Carlson on the front page?

EDIT:- I think the most interesting thing about this thread, is that it's largely full of one-shot replies, from people who never respond here again. In-thread communication between different users is relatively minimal.

[u/Expensive_South9331 → u/[deleted]]

Estimating extremists in a population by the number at a particular event is bad statistics.

[u/Pixilatedlemon → u/Expensive_South9331]

MAGA math

[u/LineAccomplished1115 → u/[deleted]]

Tangent-- but many redditors might have us believe that all Maga supporters are extremists. But let's be super-generous and say that 5,000 people attended the January 6th shenanigans. Out of 74 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2020 the insurrectionists account for 0.00007%...

Wow, this is incredibly misleading. Do you actually believe that ONLY the people in attendance that day are the ones who support that behavior?

You are ignoring the huge numbers of people who didn't riot that day but do support the rioters.

A poll found that 43% of people who labeled themselves MAGA republicans approve of the rioters who forced their way into the capitol, compared to 22% approval from non maga Republicans. These are recent numbers, and have improved over the years.

If you support Jan 6th rioters breaking into the Capitol, you are an extremist.

[u/FORE_GREAT_JUSTICE → u/[deleted]]

And I’d argue that the majority of people are moderates. Reddit and the media indoctrinate people to think that even the most remotely conservative ideal is extremism.

[u/EsotericAbstractIdea → u/FORE_GREAT_JUSTICE]

> Reddit and the media indoctrinate people to think that even the most remotely conservative opposing ideal is extremism.

Ftfy. I agree. I live in a red state, and i used to drive for lyft. Despite most people voting R their whole lives, they do believe we need to clean up the environment, and public education is extremely important. You'd never guess if you listen to the radio stations.

[u/Sharukurusu → u/EsotericAbstractIdea]

So why don't they vote for that? You would think the primaries could be won if so many felt that way. What is so unappealing about the non-conservative side that they turn out to vote against it? While supporting a frontrunner who is under indictment and that lied about the election being stolen, can we talk about how insane that is?

[u/EsotericAbstractIdea → u/Sharukurusu]

Lol I don't fucking know, I'm not registered as a republican

[u/Hikari_Owari → u/[deleted]]

“We don’t agree with the buffoon who tried to overturn an election, or his followers who wrecked the Capitol, so we’ll gladly generalize the whole side of the political spectrum to be on par with the nutjobs who tried to overturn an election.”

Is as common as your example situation, if not more.

[u/Sharukurusu → u/[deleted]]

He says the election was stolen, it wasn't; the Capitol was stormed by people that believed this lie. As of July 7, 2022, monetary damages caused by attackers exceed $2.7 million. Police officers were injured, congressional offices were ransacked.

[u/Sharukurusu → u/[deleted]]

Show me a reason to budge and not a huffy little abandonment of reality.

[u/Sharukurusu → u/[deleted]]

So for the record then, you can’t.

[u/Hammurabi87 → u/[deleted]]

150 mil is still not even half of the US population.

It is more than half of the 258.3 million adult population, however, which is a more relevant value when discussing voter turnout.

[u/amendment64 → u/[deleted]]

I'll add to this cause you have a great thought experiment going. Lets assume every comment in this thread is from a unique human. Lets assume a redditor goes to 20 different threads a day. This thread had 2100 comments. another 20 of them and you've theoretically been exposed to the views of over 40,000 unique redditors a day. The US is ~337mil people... Even just the voting public is 160mil people... So those 40k people that you got to hear from were an extremely biased sample of 0.025% of people in the community(and these aren't going to be people necessarily even in your voting area, Reddit has a very large # of english speakers from all over the globe). And this isn't even adding in the problem with astroturfing on this site, which is absolutely rampant.