Public Opinion Project Reflection

I found this project exciting from the beginning. Before taking Government class, I had minimal knowledge about Politics and this project allowed me to learn about the upcoming election through different opinions and point of views. The first five people I interviewed were my great aunts and uncles. These individuals were at least 55 years old and I knew that they were the best people to interview about Politics considering how opinionated and well informed they are. These individuals are also very religious Catholics, very conservative and have an occupation that had something to do with the medical field (nurse, pharmacists,etc). So as you can tell, they are not Democrats nor do they favor Obama because of his Obamacare. It was no surprise that their answers were very similar to each other. They all believed that the nation's economy is the number one issue and that we need more jobs to reduce unemployment and to fuel the economy. I was surprised at how serious they were about tightening welfare benefits. It was fascinating how they all value hard work and dedication to get to where they are in life and they will not allow a majority of "poor" individuals eating up their tax money just because they are "lazy" to work hard. It was also interesting how they answered the "Same Sex Marriage" question. Of course, the do not favor this type of marriage because of their religion, but they absolutely respect gay couples because they have plenty of gay friends. In contrast, when I interviewed my peers, it was no surprise that their views are very liberal considering the same sex marriage issue and the question about religion affecting who to vote for. Overall, the answers that I have received were fairly similar especially about welfare and the economy. There were however some varied answers from questions such as the military budget (yes, because it's too much money or no, we need protection). This experience have made me even more informed about politics than ever before.