If online comments were representative, then how did David Miller get elected mayor in t-dot, app. a city of red-meat conservatives?

While I don't think online comments are rep. of anything, I'm still amazed at how red-meat cons appear to predominate at t-dot outlets.

@DougSaunders (Globe and Mail European bureau chief) added the following thought later:

Given that most online reading and writing comes from left or centre-left- http://tr.im/uN9O -why are online comments always from far right?*

* One thought: The right likes to read the left because it raises their blood pressure. :)

@mathewi (Mathew Ingram, communities editor of the Globe and Mail), responded thusly:

@DougSaunders: I like to describe that as the "Call-In Radio" phenomenon :-)

@mathewi Yes, talk radio is also a vehicle of angry-right response to more liberal ideas in larger media. It's equally monochromatic...

@kspeicher (Kevin Speicher, one-time Globe employee) had the following response to Saunders:

@DougSaunders Perhaps that why the Right is referred to as being reactionary. No original content, only comments.

Okay, that's getting a bit further afield from my original point, which was to explore why there's apparently such disproportionate representation in comments about the Toronto strike from the red-meat right.

For perspective on this, Toronto went solid Liberal red and NDP orange in the 2008 federal election. The Harper Tories never came close to winning a T.O. seat.

Same thing in the 2007 provincial election. The Tories were shut out of Toronto, with the NDP winning four seats and the rest going to the Liberals. P.C. Leader John Tory lost by more than 5,000 votes in Don Valley West, his home riding.

It's safe to say that Toronto is a centre-left city (next exhibit: Mayor David Miller, a card-carrying NDPer until 2007) despite being the business capital of Canada.

But if you read the comments on municipal strike stories, you'd think you were living in rural Alberta -- or possibly rural Alabama.

My guess? Online commenting is an angry activity, much like phoning in to virtually all private-radio talk shows. And there seems to be no group angrier than aggrieved conservatives.

So why are they so angry relative to other ideological groupings?

And are they like the online discussion equivalent of weeds? Do the angry push out the reasonable?

Ideally, the range of opinion with respects to a given news story would reflect the range of opinion in the community. That's not happening right now.

But it's not happening not because centre and left voices are being excluded, it's because conservative ones are so vociferous relative to other groupings -- and because centre and left ones are possibly excluding themselves.

I dunno. I'm thinking out loud and trying to figure things out.