Second Life Users Support Obama by 73%, More Than Even Hawaii -- Here's Why

The Presidential election results are in, and the support for Obama is overwhelming. No, I don't mean the popular election, I mean my survey of Second Life opinion on the Presidential race -- with nearly 300 NWN readers registering their opinion, a massive 73% said they preferred President Obama over Romney, who attracted a paltry 13% (which is just a little more than those who chose Neither/Don't Know/Don't Care).  Notably, this means Second Life users support Obama more than even the voters of Hawaii, Obama's home state (and mine!), only 71% of whom went for for Obama. (And unsurprisingly, Hawaii is more pro-Obama than any other state -- see screencapture above.)

Why so much support for Obama in Second Life?

The main reason, I think, is that the Second Life user base skews overwhelmingly international, with just about 30% of the userbase based in the US, and most users located in the EU, Brazil, and Japan, countries which all heavily favor Obama. Another less important but likely significant factor: Unlike other online worlds, Second Life users has almost near gender parity (about 40% women, who also tend to be the most active users), and women generally favor Obama over Romney.

Finally, with its emphasis on individual freedom, creativity, non-traditional lifestyles, and acceptance of sexual content, Second Life by its very nature probably attracts people who are more likely to be liberal than not. (Then again, you can just as easily be a gun-toting, rapacious capitalist in Second Life, though in my personal observation, right-leaning SLers tend to be libertarian, not traditional values conservatives.) To be sure, neither Obama or Romney are stereotypical liberal or conservative candidates (I'm still not even sure what Romney actually believes, politically), so it's unwise to infer general political belief simply from preference of candidate. But that would probably make for a good follow-up survey.

Speaking of Hawaii, the President vacations a couple miles from where I grew up -- here's my guide to finding his place, so if you happen to visit Oahu over the holidays, you can wave your congratulations.

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Comments

[ZZ Bottom]

One more reason for Rod Humble understood the jewell is has in his hands, not those crappy copybots of Minecraft and a bet on some Ipad stuff!
Sl is unique and he sould be proud of it, not firing Linden employers that are respected by most!

[Iggy]

No other virtual world lets you don a Sarah Palin, or maybe even a Sarah Palin furry, avatar. I rather missed that this year.

I also did not see any Donald Trump avatars with mile-tall helmet hair that could deflect incoming ICBMs.

There's always 2016!

[A.J.]

Gay people have been getting married in SL as long as I can remember.

It's not easy to control people in SL, probably why it's not as appealing to conservatives.

[CarloAntonio Negulesco]

Huh...who knew that 73% of the readers of a blog who decided to participate in a poll translates to 73% of the overall SL user base. By that type of math, one could extrapolate that 73% of all people in the world would prefer Obama? Seems a bit far reaching, donchathink?

[Ciaran Laval]

@CarloAntonio In terms of numbers, 300 out of the SL userbase would be a fairly reasonable sample for pollsters but pollsters usually add other weightings.

I think the international angle would skew the poll in Barack Obama's favour, I'm sure the result would be different if only Americans took part in the poll, although I'd still suspect Obama would get a healthy vote in favour of him for some of the other reasons Hamlet highlighted.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Obama groks geek. I voted third party, but given a binary choice, I'd go with the one living in this century. I suspect he did very well with technophiles in general.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Voted for Obama here.

My reasons are all over my SL feed and the SL forums:
https://my.secondlife.com/pussycat.catnap
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/USA-elections/td-p/1725757/page/2

Online -gamers- tend to be a rather conservative racist sexist bunch. One does not have to look far to see this.

Its all over SL too.

But it doesn't -control- everything here like it can in other online more gamer focused worlds.

Here you just find the odd Dixie-flag, or a 'black man on white women' XXX-sim, one or two racially charged biker groups (mixed in with others so its really hard to figure out which and who - and most are not).

And then the whole Gorean / slave thing as sort of a 'virtual war on women' concept that baffles the heck out of me.

- These are all groups that lean heavy on conservative norms, though they come here for the things they can't express in open RL society.

Yet while they stand out pretty strongly, and dominate some genres (Gor pretty much -owns- the 'adult fantasy' experience in SL, despite being extremely obscure outside of SL).

I usually can't go more than a few days in SL without hearing or reading someone on a libertarian rant, thinly hiding their disdain for 'colored people and civil rights' (whereas in almost any MMO, this is an occurrence every 5 minutes in whatever amounts to the global chat system).

So I personally expected SL to lean more for Romney.

But I guess the international crowd that I encounter less on forums and English-language inworld communities, is more prevalent reading here.

[Sonney]

I think the "international SL" argument is quite accurate.
http://globescan.com/commentary-and-analysis/press-releases/press-releases-2012/245-global-poll-obama-overwhelmingly-preferred-to-romney.html
as it shows in this 21 country poll.
France: Obama (76%) Romney (2%)
Australia:: Obama (67%)
Canada: Obama (66%)
Nigeria: Obama (66%)
UK: Obama (65%)
in another poll Germany was even: Obama (95%) Romney (1%)

except Pakistan: Romney (14%) Obama (11%)
Conclusion: Although some republicans said they will move to Australia if Obama wins, they should move instead to Pakistan ...

[Pussycat Catnap]

Rape is often seen as legitimate in Pakistan too. So that might be a good idea. You can even get a court ruling to hold a gang-rape of your opponent's female relatives.

And if you serve on the court, you get the added 'perk' of being able to hand down that sentence and then personally carry it out.

Perfect for the GOP's new pro-rape platform.

In "tribal parts" Women's rights in other areas are also similar to GOP ideals blended with a bit of Gorean logic: You wear a burqa, or you're a slut the local tribal council gets to rape. Praise God, or off with your head.

So yeah... no surprise there on who Pakistan was for.

[Rin Tae]

While it is a interesting idea .. I am not sure if Pakistan would like to have them. They have their own problems or maybe .. they would get a tribal area of their own there? ;P

[Alazarin Mobius]

I must hang out with fairly progressive types as I never came across any American Conservative Romney supporters. At least none that were 'out' about it. I have comes across a few American gun nuts over the years and a fair number of 'support our troops' types but they're easily muted.

As for the Gorean crowd 'owning' adult fantasy RP.... meh. Their whole scene just looks and smells like islamic fundamentalism and badly made-over sharia law. For the life of me I can't understand why people, especially women, bother with it. So aside from their pushy hard-sell of being 'the only game in town', what is the draw? Some sort of masochistic stockholm syndrome, perhaps?