How Would You Describe Yourself Politically?
We’ve got more in common than you think
I knew the answer to this question, or assumed I did, before any of my interviews began. It was frankly meant to function just as a kind of throat-clearing, an easing into a more substantive conversation about politics — a softball, lobbed gently — but the answers I received surprised me and actually quickly became the most interesting part of my talks: of the five people I spoke to, not a single one identified themselves as “Democrat” or “Republican.” We conducted a survey using the same questions and it held there, too, even despite the fact that online surveys tend to provoke flattened, drive-thru style responses: just a couple of respondents identified themselves simply as Democrats; the rest were more descriptive, identifying themselves, to provide a few examples, as “on the left, but not explicitly a democrat,” or “fiscally conservative, socially leaning towards liberal,” or “Socialist that votes for and is a member of the Democratic Party.”
In other words, the answers I received were far more nuanced than I expected and indicated a broader spectrum of political views than is typically portrayed in national media or those heated conversations around the dinner table us pencils like to reference so often.
