Why Hasn't #AtheistVoter Caught On?

[rug]

August 28, 2016
Posted by Jack Vance

I know there are a number of websites that help users track the popularity of various hashtags on Twitter over various intervals of time. I think it would be great to be able to enter a few hashtags, the desired time frame, and see them graphed based on frequency of use. Unfortunately, I have yet to find one that provides this sort of information free of charge. I'm only a little curious, and I do not see myself paying for this capability.

I bring this up with the #AtheistVoter hashtag in mind. I've mentioned the #AtheistVoter campaign here a few times since I became aware of it in 2014. I thought it was a great idea, and I hoped that it might help to increase the political activity of atheists in the U.S. From what I can tell, it has still not caught on in any meaningful way. This may have something to do with people not knowing about it or the relatively haphazard way in which most of us who have been using it have been using it (i.e., as individuals without any sort of coordinated effort). But what has been the biggest surprise is just how unpopular the hashtag seems to be.

As mentioned, I have not been willing to pay for the sort of metrics that would allow me to compare this hashtag against others over time to look at trends. I have, however, looked at some metrics that assess the popularity of individual hashtags at one point in time. I used RiteTag to generate a report on #AtheistVoter this morning. The numbers I obtained indicated that #AtheistVoter generates fewer than 1 unique tweet per hour, an overall hashtag exposure of less than 100 per hour, and is retweeted less than 1 time per hour.

I realize that these numbers aren't going to mean much without a point of comparison, so I ran a similar report on the #manspreading hashtag. It showed the same numbers. Thus, #AtheistVoter does not appear to be generating any more use on Twitter than #manspreading. I was actually surprised that #manspreading was not more popular than it was because I see more activity there when I look at in Twitter than I do on the #AtheistVoter tag. Anyway, it should be noted that since these RiteTag reports are static snapshots at one point in time, I believe they fluctuate throughout the day. Repeating the comparison might produce different results.

http://www.atheistrev.com/2016/08/why-hasn-atheistvoter-caught-on.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AtheistRevolution+%28Atheist+Revolution%29

[whatthehey]

1. Well I'd guess because there's nothing that atheists qua atheists have to vote for

Sure, atheists are one of the most reliably overwhelmingly D blocs. Sure, we are guaranteed to massively oppose homophobic and bigoted referenda. But just like atheism is a negative (as in saying no to a proposition) term, atheist-informed votes in the US are much more likely to be votes against theocratic craziness than votes for secularism.

There's a simple reason for that. Openly advocating for secularism is political suicide in a nation saturated with religiosity in politics and in the electorate. You might as well put a central plank in your platform that you want to piss on US flags and ban apple pie as one that says you seek a nation where politics are completely divorced from religion and where the state drives secularism. You couldn't get elected to anything beyond some weird town council advocating French-style laité in a country where three quarters of the people believe in angels (94% of regular churchgoers) and more than half in a literal Adam and Eve.

That doesn't mean that atheist voters qua voters don't have anything to vote for, rather than against. It just means when we are voting for, say, more progressive taxes or higher minimum pay or maybe looking for ways to reduce the number of unarmed people shot by cops, we are voting for those things because we think ther make sense. Atheists are far more likely to be liberal than believers of course, and for many of the same reasons they are atheists in the first place, but we are voting for the liberal bit not the atheist bit, for the simple and obvious reason nobody's giving us any atheist, or even secular, bits to vote for.

[guillaumeb]

2. The problem with French-style laiicité

is that it substitutes secular intolerance for religious intolerance. The real problem is intolerance no matter the philosophical source.

Great response, by the way.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Maybe because atheists tend not to be "joiners" ? nt