The U.S. Political Personality (III): Presidential Candidates

We expect that U.S. presidential elections will be contentious. That always sounds worse than it is. With no disagreement or even controversy, what difference does it make who we choose for president? The whole point of an election is to decide who is best suited for the office. If candidates were all the same and agreed, we could pull a name from a hat and be done with it.

So, maybe being contentious isn’t as bad as it sounds. On the other hand, if we value contention, we may have an “embarrassment of riches” this year, because of the strong differences. Then again, if we separate civility and unnecessarily harsh tones from reasonable contention, it might simply leave us with only the “embarrassment” part of that phrase. Regardless, 2016 will go down in history as one of the more unique election years. But our job here is not to editorialize.

It is our ongoing quest to find out more about personality types and traits, and how they relate to the world. To that end, we have asked our readers to tell us their choices for presidential candidates. Then we matched this with their personality types. From that we were able to glean interesting information about the people who choose particular candidates. We have already covered party preferences and voter involvement in two previous articles of this series – this article will focus on the candidates themselves.

It’s important to keep in mind that this is a snapshot of the supporters of the candidates, and not necessarily the candidates themselves. It would make sense that supporters who identify with certain candidates may share similar personality traits with them. However, our data doesn’t guarantee that sort of bridge and shouldn’t be taken to represent the candidate – just his or her supporters as they have given us their own responses.

We have not only included the three candidates that are currently still running – Trump (unopposed), Clinton and Sanders – but also a couple of “honorable mentions” – Cruz and Kasich – who survived a good run until recently in the primary.

Read the Full Article at https://www.16personalities.com/articles/the-us-political-personality-iii-presidential-candidates (Source)

What are your thoughts?