Reddit calls itself "the front page of the Internet" and it may be the first page many people go to when online, but most of its users stay there to read their news too.

A recent survey from the Pew Research Center found 78 percent of Reddit users get their news from the site. This being an election year, 45 percent of Reddit users also say they are getting informed about the 2016 presidential campaign through Reddit.

Politics a Major Topic on Reddit

The average user on Reddit is likely to be young, male and liberal and only seven percent of adults in the U.S. use Reddit. However, it is amazing how many comments and topics are about politics and this year's election.

Reddit works differently than Twitter or Facebook. On Reddit users interact with topics by leaving comments and discussing things with people they do not know. Facebook is based on friends and family interaction and Twitter is based on following people that user's are interested in.

In the three months of data studied by Pew, more than 350,000 comments on Reddit were about one of the candidates trying to become the next President of the United States.

Candidates Mentioned in Top 10 Topics

Politics is one of the top 10 topics discussed on Reddit. Within these topics, a third had at least one comment that mentioned a presidential candidate.

Candidates are being mentioned mostly in political topics with 60 percent of the mentions being in political "subreddits." However, candidates are also being mentioned in other sections of Reddits like entertainment and sports or web culture.

One Candidate Receiving the Most Comments

One candidate gained the most mentions on Reddit in the months leading up to the early debates: Bernie Sanders. He received about 165,000 comments, while Hillary Clinton (85,000) and Donald Trump (73,000) received far less discussion.

Seeing Sanders have this much popularity is not surprising on the Internet. In previous years, candidates who were not leading in the polls dominated social networks. Ron Paul had huge numbers on Twitter back in 2011 and Howard Dean had extreme popularity on Meetup.com during the 2004 election.

Unique Comments

The amount of comments about presidential candidates are usually unique and not just a select group of people commenting. Sixty percent of users mentioned a candidate just once, while only 25 percent of users left three or more comments about a candidate.

With all of these unique comments, it is possible that candidates like Sanders have massive followings of Reddit users.

More Discussion on Election

From June to September 2015, the amount of comments on Reddit mentioning a presidential candidate jumped by 153 percent, showing increased interest in the 2016 election. The public is becoming interested in the election and 27 percent of people say they are "following the election very closely," compared to 16 percent earlier in the year.

Reddit is an easy forum for people to discuss what is important to them and as the election heats up, web traffic and comments on the site are also expected to increase.

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