Week 2: Political Personalities

Political Personality!

It comes as not shock to me that our personalities and political ideologies have such a strong correlation. Humans are at the core evolutionary motivated to support what improves our lives the most. I think people choose to believe they support policies and candidates that go beyond their own spectrum of wants because to adamantly state the inverse would be selfish. I have a fairly solid political foundation, aligning regularly with one party far more than the other. I also am a supporter of the internet conspiracy considering Ted Cruz but that's neither here nor there. Anyway let's take some quizzes!

 Quiz 1: Political Typology quiz 

http://www.people-press.org/quiz/political-typology/results/

This one was by far the most predictable in my opinion. I actually did not feel it was the best assessment of political ideologies because it oversimplified intricate and controversial topics. While most arguments can absolutely be broken down to their rudimentary facets, I felt this quiz took it a bit too far. It did cater to relevant political discussions such as abortion, gay rights, and racial discrimination. It was fairly accurate in my fervent belief in diplomacy before military strength, equality for all races, sexes, and gender orientation, and optimism for the future. My views may not be overly liberal on all issues as the quiz predicted, but its pretty frequent that it is. All in all, this one was no surprise for me. 

Quiz 2: I Side With...

http://www.isidewith.com/elections/2016-presidential

Now here's a quiz that took a substantial amount of time, made me really think, and had me questioning who could possibly agree/disagree on some of these questions. I wasn't particularly shocked with the results of this one either as I am a supporter of Bernie (more so in contrast to the train wreck that is the other candidates). What did surprise me was the number of potential and I'm sure popular opinions that some of the questions had. There was more diversity in the potential answers than I'd assumed. I was also caught a bit off guard at how vacillating some of my views were on arguments I'd previously been so self-assured on. I stood with Bernie at 97%, Hillary at 95% (so essentially Bernie's stolen policies), Jill Stein at 95% (absolutely no clue who that is), Ted Cruz at 22%, and Trump at 12% (that's 12% too much) 

Quiz 3: Open Politics, A Political Personality Quiz

http://openpolitics.ca/ppq/index.php

This was interesting because my results proclaimed I supported big government. I was so ready to contest this until I read the description. "You believe in the power of government to make life better. You may have felt that what the country really needs is for the government to get serious about the many problems that people face". They got me pegged. Although I do not necessarily encourage a powerful federal government (Sam Adams and James Monroe and I have that in common), I do feel at this point in our nation’s history, what would be most effective is if the government took a more influential role especially in regards to regulations of commerce. The other result from this quiz was fiercely democrats. By this point in the blog post, I think we all realize how accurate that is. 

The final Quiz: The Political Compass

https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2?ec=-6.13&soc=-7.13

Now this one was more diverse than the other quizzes which was much appreciated. I wanted to know more about my political beliefs than how big of a Democrat I was. My results decided me as an economically leftist social libertarian This makes me economically a socialist (oh no!, that practically makes me a communist according to the Republicans). I identify somewhere in the midst of socialist and free market principles, my economic policies are still in the works really. The social libertarian title pretty much translates into the belief that each individual life is valuable, perhaps more so than the state. Once again, libertarianism and authoritarianism are two extremes that I'd like to find a balance between. This quiz was the only truly eye opening one for me that exposed how much I have left to decide politically before confidently voting this November.