My Political Compass

I have not had much interest in politics until recently. Before last year, I did not care for anything related to politics; I thought that it was all boring and had little to no affect on me on a personal level. I am more interested in politics nowadays. I know better now that it does affect me and I should care about it. I had learned about the concepts of political socialization, party identification, political tolerance, political trust, political efficacy in government class and how they affect my political beliefs. My personal political belief has been shaped into what it is today and is still being shaped because of those six concepts.

I took three quizzes, the ‘Political Typology Quiz’, ‘The Political Party Test’ and the ‘I Side with Presidential Quiz’, to determine my own political identity. Each of the quizzes had a myriad of questions that ultimately resulted in a final result displaying my political standpoint. The first two quizzes resulted in a product of ‘Young Outsider’ and ‘Independent’, two identities that are not completely partial to neither of the two major groups, the conservatives nor liberals. Each considered politically neutral. The third quiz; however, stated that I shared various viewpoints with two major Democratic candidates, Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But, I still had a portion of my views in connection with Donald Trump and Ben Carson, two

Page 213/chapter 6: From the quiz, I know I am a Liberal who favored individual initiative and support social and political reform. Knowing a political ideology helps us to learn more about government and politics. Now, I am interested about my political

Based on my responses, this quiz placed me into the next generation left which includes people with liberal values. As a person has different political views towards different things, my views are also scattered between democrats and republicans in different prospects. I stand as a democrat while taking the views related to criminal justice and immigration where they are more liberal. In some cases, like the issue of gun control, I am in support of republicans as they strongly oppose the use of guns and hand arms to control the crime.

Living in the United States some people may forget how closely our political perspectives are to each other relative to those of foreign countries. While there are many political views and stances that an individual might take on any given topic, generally people in the United States fall into one of three categories: liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Keep in mind that most people will not support all of the ideals of their advocated faction, but they must support the vast majority of them.

After taking the quiz I have come to the conclusion that I lean more towards the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. My best fit according to the quiz was that I am a Young Outsider. According to the quiz, Young Outsiders generally express unfavorable opinions of both major parties and are largely skeptical of activist government, as a majority views government as wasteful and inefficient. Also, many Young Outsiders come from the two conservative typology groups Steadfast Conservatives and Business Conservatives in their support for the environment and many liberal social policies according to the quiz. I agree with the label of a Young Outsider to an extent because I think that I do lean more towards the Republican Party, but there are also views that I have which are unfavorable of both parties. When taking this quiz, I did realize that I share mixed views from both parties, but it only helped to confirm my speculation that I was not really one side or the other.

Then my junior year of high school is when my beliefs and opinions started to take shape. I became extremely fascinated with politics and landed my first internship with republican State Senator Guy Reschenthaler. I have realized that younger generations follow in the footsteps of their parents in political views but I was different, my parents are both democrats and I am a republican.

Given the examples I have shown I would place myself as a moderate on the political Spectrum. my opinions supports both Republican and

Based on the political quiz that evaluated my stances on certain issues, my political beliefs and interests aligned with Centrist ideology, although slightly leaning to the Left Wing. Despite my upbringing as a strong Republican, the results classifying me as a Centrist did not shock me due the simple fact of maturation and growing more aware of current world and local issues through watching the morning news, reading news articles on the internet or reading The New York Times, and going to high school. Overtime, with these various exposures- a wide variety of political beliefs- I stopped relying on what I just knew from being around my family and hearing only their bias opinions, and instead began analyzing at what I personally believe and

I have always been interested in politics, and I personally believe that every American citizen should participate in politics and have at least a basic knowledge about politics. The Pew typology quiz classified me as a Steadfast Conservative. I was not surprised at all to my classification. As a child growing up in a Conservative family, I was taught to love and have respect for my country, to support traditional American values, to believe that religion plays an important role in my life and to protect gun rights and support the U.S. military. Now as an adult, I still hold those same Conservative

I would say that this is quite an accurate representation of my political ideology. Despite not having all the same views as the majority of this group holds, I deeply align with many of them. For example, this group is slightly more conservative and leans toward the Republican party, but holds the opinions of both parties, which is an accurate assessment. I believe that I am mostly conservative, but I also hold a lot of mixed views espoused by both political parties. The Young outsiders are largely skeptical of activist government, which I believe to be true, which proves the quiz results accurate. Environmental and liberal social policies are also supported by this group, many of which I also support, once again, consistent with my results. This evidence proves that I am consistently aligned as a Young Outsider based upon my own personal views which agrees with the results of the typology

According to the “I Side With” quiz I am extremely liberal and 98% of my opinions align with Bernie Sanders. This was not a surprise. I’ve always known that my views are very left wing and Bernie Sanders is my favorite candidate. Some of my foreign policy opinions (such as decreasing military spending and closing Guantanamo Bay) aligned with Rand Paul which was surprising. I was not educated enough on some of the issues to answer them accurately, which is something that I need to work on.

I somewhat agree with the results of this quiz. I always knew I feel politically right, even very far right for that matter. However, I never saw

     Upon taking the “Worlds smallest Political quiz” online, the website told me that I was a Centrist. A Centrist is a person who favors selective political involvement and practical solutions to modern problems. A Centrist tends to keep an open mind on new issues and prefers capitalism to work out economic problems if at all possible. Although I was a centrist I was on the boarder line of being a right wing conservative who would like to see a capitalistic society and little government intervention. The next quiz was an ideology quiz. This quiz told me that I also tended towards the conservative side. I apparently also would like to see order in society instead of equality. These two tests showed similar results in that both said I was more closely related to a conservative than a liberal. The “Worlds smallest Political Quiz” showed the national results and percentages of those who have previously taken the test. The majority of people who take the quiz, 37.7% are liberals. The second most popular grouping is Centrist at 29 %. The ideology quiz stated that the average of all those who take this quiz are liberal as well.

One aspect of my life that has shaped my political views is my religious background. I grew up in a Baptist family, and used to go to church regularly. As I got older, I started going to church less and less because the things my pastor said made me feel very uncomfortable. At the time, I did not understand why I felt so uncomfortable and it was not until I got older that I realized why I felt the way I did. Majority of the time, my pastor said things that had sexist and homophobic undertones. Despite being in a holy place, I spent the duration of my time as a member of the church feeling disconnected from everything, which eventually led to me breaking ties with the church completely.