Are You Actually a Democrat or a Republican?

I know you think you know if you are more of a democrat or a republican... but how can you be so sure if you haven't taken a test? You can't, obviously! So being the nice guy I am, I created a quiz so you can be certain exactly how well you align with your party of choice based upon their real stated principles.

This quiz doesn't care what you call yourself. It asks what you actually believe, scores it across four separate dimensions (economics, social values, government power, and America's role in the world), and then shows you where your answers land. If your label and your brain disagree, you'll see exactly where and by how much.

By the way - the longer the quiz, the more accurate! So go Deep or go home!

The Fourteen Labels You Might Get

The quiz doesn't just sort you into red or blue. It measures your answers against fourteen distinct political positions, because plenty of people, maybe you, don't actually live inside either party. Here's the full field, so when your result names something you've never called yourself, you'll know exactly what it means.

Socialist

Major industries, utilities, energy, healthcare, should be publicly owned, because an economy should answer to voters instead of shareholders. Healthcare, housing, and education are rights to be guaranteed, not products to be priced. The Democratic Party happily takes these votes while keeping the actual agenda at arm's length.

Democratic Socialist

Wants much of the socialist destination but insists on the democratic route: ballots, unions, and legislation rather than revolutions. Markets can exist, but on a leash, underneath a welfare state strong enough that nobody falls through. Points at Scandinavia and asks why not here.

Progressive

Society should move forward, deliberately and fast, with government as the engine: aggressive climate action, structural reform, and expanded rights for people the system has shortchanged. Finds the Democratic Party perpetually too slow and too cozy with its donors. The left wing of the possible.

Liberal

The mainstream Democratic position. Markets are fine as long as government referees them hard: consumer protection, environmental rules, and a safety net that actually catches people. Socially permissive, with government kept out of bedrooms and doctors' offices, and a believer in trade, alliances, and institutions abroad.

Centrist

Takes each issue on its own merits and lands near the middle on most of them, left on some things, right on others, allergic to package deals. Both parties consider you persuadable; you consider them exhausting. You have far more company than either party likes to admit.

Conservative

The mainstream Republican position. Free markets with minimal interference, lower taxes, traditional social values, a strong military, and a secure border. Fundamentally skeptical that a government program can solve anything a family, a church, or a business couldn't solve better.

Neoconservative

Free markets at home, American power projected abroad. The world stays safe when the United States leads it, which means alliances, bases, trade, and intervention when dictators misbehave. This was the Republican establishment from Reagan through Bush; today it's a faction hunting for a home.

Paleoconservative

The old-school right: faith, family, community, and nation, in that order. Wants tariffs protecting American industry, a closed border, far fewer foreign entanglements, and a culture that stops apologizing for tradition. Distrusts big government and big corporations about equally, since both bulldoze local life. Think Pat Buchanan, not Wall Street.

National Populist

Left on economics, right on culture. Protect Social Security and Medicare, bring the factories home, enforce the border, and end the foreign wars. This is the blue-collar voter both parties court every four years and forget every five, and neither party's platform actually matches the combination.

Libertarian

Maximum freedom in both directions: your money and your bedroom are equally none of the government's business. Legalize it, deregulate it, and stop policing the planet. Libertarians are consistent where both major parties are only selectively principled, which is exactly why neither party can stand them.

Anarcho-Capitalist

The libertarian who kept going. No taxes, no state at all; courts, roads, and defense provided by markets, contracts, and voluntary association. It's a rigorous thought experiment that no country has ever run on purpose, which believers will tell you is precisely the problem.

Anarchist

Not the organized left flavor or the free-market right flavor, just finished with the entire arrangement. No state, no rulers, and no strong opinion about what comes after, if anything does. If your answers land here, you either believe civilization is beyond repair or you had entirely too much fun with this quiz. Possibly both.

Left-Anarchist

No state, but no billionaires either. Society organizes itself from the bottom up through cooperatives, unions, and voluntary communities, with neither bosses nor bureaucrats giving orders. Shares the anarcho-capitalist's enemy and almost none of the anarcho-capitalist's conclusions.

Authoritarian Left

Big government on economics and on everything else: a strong state that plans the economy, directs the culture, and doesn't take no for an answer. Almost nobody in America claims this label out loud, but the answer pattern exists, and history has met it many times.