Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Blog: Liberal intolerance, by the numbers

Link: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/03/liberal_intolerance_by_the_numbers.html (via shareaholic.com)

At last we have statistical evidence that liberals are less tolerant of views that disagree with theirs than are conservatives.  Andrew Malcolm of Investor's Business Daily points us to the data, found in a Pew Center for the Internet and American Life Project study.
The new research found that instead of engaging in civil discourse or debate, fully 16% of liberals admitted to blocking, unfriending or overtly hiding someone on a social networking site because that person expressed views they disagreed with. That's double the percentage of conservatives and more than twice the percentage of political moderates who behaved like that.
The proportion jumps even higher when someone on a social site disagrees with a liberal's post.
Only 1% of moderates would block or shut out someone who dared to disagree with them, compared to 11% of liberals, whose rate was nearly three times that of conservatives.
The same 11% of liberals would block or unfriend people who offended them by daring to argue about political issues, vs 6% and 7% for other political views.
Liberals (14%) even blocked or shut out those they deemed posted too frequently on politics, vs 8% and 9% for moderates and conservatives, respectively.
The delightful title of the piece sums it all up: "Online, liberals far less tolerant than normal people"

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