What do you think the current demographics of DU are in regards to political affiliation?

[Quackers]

How many Democrats, Independents, and Republicans are here. I'm curious as to what people think.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Amongst the members..

the members who post often, the members who post loudly, the members who obviously troll...

Of the members in general, it's really tough to guess.

[silvershadow]

2. Absolutely. Not a clue. It's just another internet site. Happens to have a lot of Democrats,

has a lot of people of other persuasions too.

[Rhiannon12866]

3. Well, all of us here are supposed to support Democrats, and we generally do

Though my guess is that the vast majority of us are liberals, so it makes sense that we'd support Democrats. I've been here since 2003, so that's my take on it.

[Sherman A1]

5. The question I would pose

would be supporting Democrats or Democratic Ideals? I think as the country's politics have moved to the Right since the 1980's we find that often we are seeing Democrats elected that are much further right than many of us would prefer as they are running in areas that require them to be more conservative just in order to get elected.

[Rhiannon12866]

6. I certainly agree with you on that

In recent years, we've often been reduced to voting for centrists, who are running as Democrats, since those are the most "liberal" choices we have. It used to be said the "liberal" had a negative connotation, but we had more liberal candidates then than we do today. I think the pendulum has swung in that more of us are proudly self-proclaimed liberals, but there are fewer liberals running.

Compared to many of today's candidates, even some who ran as Republicans would be considered liberal. I realize now that my parents were liberal Republicans. They don't seem to exist anymore.

[Sherman A1]

7. Indeed

And we can also find ourselves liberal on some issues, while more conservative on others, but even the terms liberal and conservative often are misleading as our media has worked hard to pigeon hole every debate into the 15 second sound bite and the screaming matches that pass for panel discussions. The issues are generally rather nuanced and require careful thought and reasonable discussions, there rarely are simply black and white answers that work out well.

[Rhiannon12866]

8. After being on DU for so long, I really have become a news junkie

I really don't spend much time watching entertainment shows anymore, and working with the commercial TV networks used to be my job, LOL. But lately I find myself changing the channel, the news has been so hard to take. Granted, a lot of it has been because I can't stand to see or hear one more word from Trump, but it seems like the news shows have been going out of their way to give more than equal time to conservatives and conservative viewpoints.

I agree that we all have differing viewpoints on a lot of issues, but there are certain core issues that I know that DUers are united on, despite the grudge match in GDP.

And you're right that so much of the news has been reduced to sound bytes. Our attention span has been reduced to Twitter entries. And it's pretty scary to think that that's the way most voters get their news.

[JNelson6563]

4. Hard to say on that count

Much easier to guess at how many have never been active in real life politics.