I don't see political posts here getting traction very often. The ones that do usually are angled towards the community (anytime censorship bills come up, you get 500+ comment HN threads). Meanwhile, browsing the new section I found that articles that are just blatantly political ("you won't believe what AOC did in Florida!" to make up a title), often linger with few comments and votes.

And even in those rare political posts I find, the discourse is very different from other places. I think that boils down to the golden rule of comments: "thoughtful and substantive". I've noticed the culture of HN is to downvote any comment that does not adhere to this rule, regardless of whether you agree with it or not. Even in comments I've posted about China that ended with a sentence about how I disliked the leader got knocked for being counterproductive.

At the end of the day, you can have the most frought and divisive thread here and the comments are going to all be far more civil and thoughful than on Reddit or Facebook because even thought everyone might be up in arms, all of them are going "well I'll show them! types long thoughtful comment that addresses everyone's grievances"