Monday, February 04, 2008

Political affiliations

Yes, I know that many of you are getting sick of hearing about politics eventhough many of us will be able to vote in the upcoming election. For that, I'm sorry

However, I'm interested in how many of you know who you support and whether it's because you agree with their views or just their general image/message.

The link provided is a test that shows who you mostly likely align with as far as ideology; for how many of you does it match up? (I'm not sure how accurate it is...but it was the best I could find).

Now, why do some people defend a candidate just because they are of the same party? Has politics become so Democrat vs. Republican that many people cant see beyond the party and into what a cadidate stands for? How many people would vote for someone merely because they are in that party, without stopping to consider their view beyond that it "should fit because thats what the party always represents"?

2 comments:

katrina337 said...

Mine matched with whom I am currently leaning towards with my stance. I did, however, have issues with the test, because I don't think even with 6 different buttons, it encompassed all the possibilities for stances. For example, with the issue of keeping drugs off the streets vs. treating drug addicts, I think there's an entirely different origin to the problem. Have you noticed how many people who become drug addicts have brain dysfunctions? Maybe if we treated them for their brain dysfunctions, they wouldn't become drug addicts, and then we wouldn't have as much of a concern with drug addict treatment and keeping drugs off the streets.

I don't know. I think it's kind of sad that people look at what party the person falls under rather than what the person stands for. I know that in my home, my mother doesn't allow republican speakers on the television. Seriously, watching the republican debates or seeing the president speak is completely out of the question. Though I find other ways to get my information on the people, it greatly hinders my ability in choosing a candidate to follow because that's part of the process I go through when deciding how much I can agree with the candidate. Sometimes how they deliver their speeches impact my view on them a lot, because I might perceive them as someone who'll crack under pressure or something else that I wouldn't get just from reading about their stances. It's kind of the same bias, I have no idea what drives it, but one party just becomes bad.

Observer said...

When I did the test I was aligned with the candidate who I support. However, I do notice that many people align mainly with their political party and not the issues. I think one reason for this might be because at some point they candidates of their party had similar views on the issues and thus they supported them. As time goes on, however, many candidates change their mind on issues (for example: as the economy gets worse, candidate changes their ideas to put economy over war) even if the party as a whole does not. If people do not keep up with the current views of the candidate they can fall behind on who would actually mirror their ideas best. A big part of this involves language because how a candidate or party presents their ideas can be confusing. If you do not pay attention to their wording and the connotations of the words it can cause you to make your mind up because of the wrong idea. On the other hand, some people do support the party more than the issues just because they can not face supporting the other side due to possible stereotypes about the other side (hippy liberals or super conservative Republicans). Basically, I think that people need to pay more attention to the main issues that concern them and less time seeing what is democratic or republican.