Comment by pickleRick243

Almost 40% of California voted for Trump. The political polarity of a group can be measured in multiple ways. If you measure it by the views of its elected representatives or leaders of its institutions, it will look quite extreme because every 55/45 gets converted to a +1. In other words, you can have nearly 30% of a state being against gay marriage, yet "obviously" California is extremely gay-friendly.

I suspect (for no concrete reason in particular besides a feeling) that the readership of HN is fairly similar to California in political demographics. Active commentators are considerably more left-wing due to selection effects.