I got a disproportionately large number of downvotes in the election primary
(+810, -100; more than twice as many downvotes as other popular candidates).
Why?
What do people have against me or object to?
How can I make myself better?
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Sign up to join this communityI got a disproportionately large number of downvotes in the election primary
(+810, -100; more than twice as many downvotes as other popular candidates).
Why?
What do people have against me or object to?
How can I make myself better?
I don't know about the other 99 people. But I think I voted against you. It was nothing personal, but the candidate I wanted was behind you and voting for them and against you was almost like voting for them twice.
I didn't downvote you, but one area for improvement that I can see is more participation here on Meta. Some of the other candidates are on the front page of users here.
Also, you may have suffered a few downvotes just from being too good at answering on SO. You were the highest ranked candidate if I remember correctly, and some people may just simply think that your time is better spent answering questions. I know many people voiced that opinion about several candidates during the original moderator elections.
I believe a significant number of downvotes may have come simply because of the brevity of your campaign statement. For the ten final candidates, the number of words in your statement vs. downvotes looks something like this (sorted by words in your statement):
Candidate | Words | Votes | +/- Ratio
------------------------------------------------------------
George Stocker 97 +321 / -62 5.18
SLaks 111 +810 / -100 8.10
Robert Harvey 220 +680 / -39 17.4
Dave DeLong 222 +390 / -90 4.33
Michael Mrozek 222 +533 / -41 13.0
Paul Dixon 332 +311 / -37 8.4
Lasse V. Karlsen 381 +570 / -42 13.6
Justin 'jjnguy' Nelson 456 +525 / -45 11.7
Kev 833 +449 / -55 8.16
Tim Post 858 +512 / -36 14.2
You, George, and Dave were the three most downvoted of the top ten primary candidates, and all three of you had among the shortest campaign statements.
Perhaps people didn't feel that those with short statements were as serious about the process, or that they couldn't learn enough about what would make you a great moderator from just your profile or a link to your activity on Meta. I know that I wouldn't want to browse through every answer someone had given on Meta to understand their philosophy, I'd rather just have a handwritten summary (even with simple bullet points).
Unfortunately, many of the things that would make someone a great moderator are hard to extract from profile information. Therefore, it's important that you make a case for yourself in your campaign statement.
My guess is that it's just tactics.
If they have another favourite they can give them an extra edge by voting for them and then downvote you.