Where do you fit?

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press is an independent research group that studies public attitudes toward the press, politics, and public policy issues. The Center's "Where do you fit?" feature allows citizens to provide information about their personal values and attitudes, partisan leanings, and involvement in politics in order to place themselves among one of ten groups of American citizens. Go to the Center's "Where do you fit?" feature on the web. Read over the descriptions of the ten groups that the Center has identified. Based on your reading, which group do you identify with most? Least? Why? Next, follow the link to the "Where do you fit?" questionnaire and fill it out. Do you obtain the same result that you predicted for yourself? If not, was the result close to what you predicted? If the result of the quiz did not match your prediction, identify at least one question that you would add to the questionnaire in order to improve its accuracy.




Is the nation awash in libertarians?

The Libertarian Party is one of the most established and active minor political parties in the United States. In the 2000 elections, for example, it appeared on ballots in all 50 states and ran nearly 2,000 candidates for public office at various levels, including president. Go to the Libertarian Party's web site located at http://www.lp.org/. From this page follow the link to a feature called the World's Smallest Political Quiz. Once you get to the quiz, you can leave the default settings in place-you do not have to fill it out, unless you're interested-and hit the "submit" button. Pay close attention to the overall results of the quiz that the Libertarian Party reports. Notice that the overall number of libertarian identifiers is almost 40%, a figure that is nearly double the number reported in the Challenge of Democracy (see figure 5.5). What do you think is the best possible explanation for this large discrepancy? Would you be more likely to trust the numbers reported by the Libertarian Party or the textbook as being representative of the nation as a whole? Why?