User:Jonathan Stokes/Wikipedians by Political Party

Wikipedians by Political Party

I became intrigued when reading that Jimmy Wales believes Wikipedia editors are disproportionately liberal. Various sources have claimed that Wikipedia has a liberal bias.

I decided to see if Jimmy Wales' claim was verifiable. I added the number of Wikipedians who self-identified in the political categories below. And compared them to the general American population who self-identified their political affiliations with the highly reputable electionstudies.org in 2004.

* The Cato Institute speculates that as many as 13% of Americans hold Libertarian beliefs. However, it should be noted that The Cato Institute is run by Libertarians, and is therefore a potentially biased source!

My Conclusions


 * 1) Liberal and "Leftist" Wikipedians are roughly proportionate to the US population.
 * 2) Libertarians are overwhelmingly over-represented.
 * 3) Conservative Wikipedians are dramatically under-represented.

I've now written the full story at my blog: http://blog.valuewiki.com/2007/02/26/does-wikipedia-have-a-liberal-bias/