Hm. Well I just went back through the quiz and answered a couple questions differently that I'd been on the fence about before and got a different result that makes even more sense still. I'm now classified as a "stressed sideliner", which basically means that you're a low-income person with nothing more than a high school diploma who nobody cares about, or at least not enough to bother engaging; an alienated, fairly non-partisan, probably female person with left-leaning economic views (e.g. more than 70% of this group supports a $15/hour minimum wage, tuition-free college, universal health care, higher taxes on the wealthy, etc.) and mixed but slightly conservative-leaning social and/or foreign policy views overall, which feels like more of a match for where I am right now than my former result's suggestion that I'm a "strong Democrat". You can see my answers to each query here.
As explained in the OP, I felt that my previous result overall made sense in that it correctly identified most of the specific areas where I disagree with the prevailing views of my party and with liberals and progressives. However, I had to qualify my previous result by pointing out that I'm not so doggedly partisan as it suggested. No such qualification is needed in this case. Same thing with religiosity: my previous result required me to qualify that I'm not religiously motivated toward any of my views. No such qualification is needed in this case because the "stressed sideliner" group isn't particularly more religious than the population at large.
This new result is mainly the result of cutting my previous scores for both parties in half. This time I gave the Democrats a 30% instead of a 60% and the Republicans a 10% instead of a 20%. I was kinda generous the first time, but on reflecting more and coming to the realization that there's no longer anyone I can picture myself voting for in 2024 and own a "Let's Go Brandon!" T-shirt and plan to change my party registration from Democrat to independent in the near future...the fact that I'm losing interest in politics and see myself becoming less engaged in the future...I decided to be harsher, feeling that that was a more honest reading of my current feelings. I agree more often with the Democrats than the Republicans, but the truth is that I feel politically homeless right now and that I expected more from my party than this now that they have the House, the Senate, and the presidency. I can't think of anything (...or at least not anything good...) Joe Biden has done for me so far that Trump didn't. I mean there was the Covid relief bill and the stimulus check with that and all, but Trump also signed two of those into law that together supplied me a similar sum of money, for instance. I think I agree with that recent New York Times opinion video arguing that liberals are hypocrites who simply don't live a lot of their purported values. The main differences between the parties seem to be cultural issues and I don't feel like my opinions are even close to where either party currently stands on those overall.
I also read through the typology group comparisons gauging the stances of each on an expanded range of issues in charts, as well as their demography, and my views definitely line-up most closely with the "stressed sideliners" people. Overwhelmingly I found myself in agreement with either the majority or plurality opinion of this group on like everything there practically, and also, appropriately, demographically aligned. I think that's me. At this point anyway.
Anyway, I also changed my answer to the immigration question to "America’s openness to people from all over the world is essential to who we are as a nation" because the question asks whether that's closest to your opinion or not and I think it is, really. My actual stance on immigration policy is that I support what's traditionally been known as "comprehensive immigration reform", as in generally tougher border policies combined with a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are already here, and I also just really don't care whether everyone speaks English or not. It turns out that aligns me with the "stressed sideliners" crowd too.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 29 November 2021
