- There are 229 accounts in Lemmy that have used the phrase “Democratic Party” more than once in the last 6 months or so.
- There are 188 that have used the phrase “Republican Party” more than once.
- There are 25 that have used the phrase “Democrat Party” more than once
Having "Democrat Party" (or similar constructions like "Democrat voters") be unusual on Lemmy makes perfect sense. It's something I pretty much never hear outside of conservative circles. It always sounds really weird to me and I don’t think it would ever occur to me to use it. It’s not surprising that it’s so rare on Lemmy.
What is unusual is that there's quite a bit of overlap between accounts that use this unusual phrasing that's pretty much only seen from conservatives, and accounts that claim to be opposing the Democrats from the left -- giving reasons and arguments why Lemmy users should not vote for the Democrats, because they are not doing enough to advance a leftist agenda (or, that voting is not worthwhile, or similar things.)
The conclusion is left for the reader. I am, honestly, a little bit on the fence about listing the accounts or going into the data. I decided it would be drama-inducing to list accounts specifically; honestly, it's useful and informative detail, but it would create some heat without light, probably, and there's no reason to think that 100% of the accounts that are part of the overlap are what the obvious conclusion would be that a lot of them are. I'm going to simply state the conclusion, and anyone who wants to replicate the data for themselves is welcome to do so.
I did ask two of the accounts that were part of the overlap what was up with it, and neither of them answered me, although a third party did chime in with this explanation:
I've had various liberals tell me Democrat was a form of dog whistle or sign I'm a right winger. One person started to dig into my mutual aid info trying to figure out if I was a Russian bot because I said "Democrat" instead of Democratic. I've tried to Democratic as a noun, and it felt grammatically incorrect. "I'm running as a Democatic." "The current majority in the house is with the Democratics."
Personally I think "Democrat" works for both candidate, party, and voter. "Biden is the Democrat's Nominee" vs "Biden is the Democratic nominee".
I think that the Democratic Party is hated both from the left and the right, and calling them the Democrat Party makes some sense if you don't view them as aligning with real democracy. Kind of like when one calls pro-life people "pro-forced-pregnancy" or "anti-abortion".
Like there's probably plenty of astroturfing out there, but I don't think this is a strong sign a particular account is astroturf. Since we are all exposed to everyone's discourse, that way of referring to Democrats could fairly easily hop between different groups that don't like Democrats. Like I wouldn't be surprised if "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" makes its way to the right somehow just because it's anti-liberal, even though it originates from the left.
Despite its origin on the right, I think that type of phrasing makes a bit more sense coming from the left than the right, because the right does not actually care at all about democracy, except when they equate it with capitalism, and democracy is like the left's whole deal.