I made a comment in one of the Trump threads that the board does not mirror the public, and @Joe Bryant responded with the following comment/question:
I'm fascinated with the 3rd point. "This board may not mirror the general public exactly".
On a scale of 1 (board completely mirrors the general public) to 10 (board completely does NOT mirror the public), what number would you say?
So, rather than derail that thread, I figured I would throw it open to the Political Forum crowd at large.
From my perspective - its a rather odd question to try an nail down - but I don't think its controversial to say the board demographics - specifically Politics Forums, but probably FFA in general, is not indicative of the public.
1. Board is predominantly male. General public is roughly 50-50 - if I had to guess I would say the board is 95%+ male - depending on how many Tanner aliases you count.
2. Sitting behind a computer screen where some of us prefer dark, and some prefer white - its hard to get a ethnicity breakdown - but my guess is that we skew white - more so than the general public.
3. Education-wise, I think the board skews heavily towards college-educated, or beyond.
4. Age - we are not getting younger, and we don't get many new visitors to this part of the innerwebs - so I think we would skew slightly older - but in reality we may be close to the median, but with a truncated graph - losing both the young and old tails.
5. Rural/Urban - a quick google search shows that 19% of the population lives in a rural area*. I would guess that we have fewer rural residents in our midst - just based on the nature of an on-line community that is more conducive to someone working in an office.
So, at a starting point, I think the average user here is a 40ish white male, with a college degree, living in an urban setting.
And, this is before we get to political leanings. But, even there, I think we can take the board demographics to draw meaningful conclusions - for example, when we do Dem candidate polls Mayor Pete almost always significantly outperforms his national polling - because he appeals to older white college-educated males.
White Males would tend to skew GOP/Trump, but that is counter-weighted by Urban college-educated which would skew Dem/Anti-Trump. From a political perspective, I think we lean more Center-Left than the general public, and we don't really have much perspective from women, or people of color.
So, I don't think we get a fair representation of "Trump Supporter" - which national polls suggest is about 40% - that leads to the persecution complex felt by those that do support Trump, but are vastly outnumbered in this community.
*The U.S. Census Bureau defines rural as what is not urban—that is, after defining individual urban areas, rural is what is left.
I'm fascinated with the 3rd point. "This board may not mirror the general public exactly".
On a scale of 1 (board completely mirrors the general public) to 10 (board completely does NOT mirror the public), what number would you say?
So, rather than derail that thread, I figured I would throw it open to the Political Forum crowd at large.
From my perspective - its a rather odd question to try an nail down - but I don't think its controversial to say the board demographics - specifically Politics Forums, but probably FFA in general, is not indicative of the public.
1. Board is predominantly male. General public is roughly 50-50 - if I had to guess I would say the board is 95%+ male - depending on how many Tanner aliases you count.
2. Sitting behind a computer screen where some of us prefer dark, and some prefer white - its hard to get a ethnicity breakdown - but my guess is that we skew white - more so than the general public.
3. Education-wise, I think the board skews heavily towards college-educated, or beyond.
4. Age - we are not getting younger, and we don't get many new visitors to this part of the innerwebs - so I think we would skew slightly older - but in reality we may be close to the median, but with a truncated graph - losing both the young and old tails.
5. Rural/Urban - a quick google search shows that 19% of the population lives in a rural area*. I would guess that we have fewer rural residents in our midst - just based on the nature of an on-line community that is more conducive to someone working in an office.
So, at a starting point, I think the average user here is a 40ish white male, with a college degree, living in an urban setting.
And, this is before we get to political leanings. But, even there, I think we can take the board demographics to draw meaningful conclusions - for example, when we do Dem candidate polls Mayor Pete almost always significantly outperforms his national polling - because he appeals to older white college-educated males.
White Males would tend to skew GOP/Trump, but that is counter-weighted by Urban college-educated which would skew Dem/Anti-Trump. From a political perspective, I think we lean more Center-Left than the general public, and we don't really have much perspective from women, or people of color.
So, I don't think we get a fair representation of "Trump Supporter" - which national polls suggest is about 40% - that leads to the persecution complex felt by those that do support Trump, but are vastly outnumbered in this community.
*The U.S. Census Bureau defines rural as what is not urban—that is, after defining individual urban areas, rural is what is left.