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According to a poll about presidential election preferences conducted by The Union, 81% of MHS students supported Joe Biden. However, despite the overwhelming support for the Democratic candidate, there are some students who supported the Republican party and third parties, as well as others that consider themselves as independents.
Junior Colin Tran has always been an independent. However, he got more involved in politics during the 2016 presidential election because he did not like Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump, so he continued to support third-party candidates, Tran said.
“I liked capitalism, but I didn’t like how Democrats were going … with regulation,” Tran said in a Zoom interview. “ I also didn’t like how Republicans are doing it. They said they liked free-market capitalism, but they’re just putting on more regulations, and their tax breaks weren’t really working at all.”
Even though Tran does not support the American Independent Party, outside of school, he has expressed his political beliefs by interning for the Libertarian Party over the summer, Tran said. Even though he does not agree with most of the Libertarian Party’s views, he likes how they are trying to push for change, and he believes it is a step in the right direction for independents, he added.
Tran’s favorite politician is Ludwig von Mise, the founder of the Austrian School of Economy who died in 1973. “I like his ideas, mainly Austrian economics, where … you don’t reject statistics, but … it’s more intuitive. He used a priori reasoning, instead of Keynesian economics,” Tran said.
Tran said he supports policies related to deregulation and tax breaks. He believes that Trump’s tax policies were not good because Trump at first decreased taxes but then increased them later, Tran said. He hopes the U.S reaches a point where taxes will not be needed, he added.
Tran also said he believes that history teachers should make changes in their classes to make people more comfortable in expressing their political opinions. “When I took the class (AP World History), it was pretty biased,” Tran said. “They got communism completely wrong. They … said it was an authoritative system. It’s nothing like that.”
Junior Aryan Gupta also considers himself an independent. He decided to become an independent in 2018 after he realized that both Republicans and Democrats were not fulfilling their promises, Gupta said. He found multiple problems in both parties and decided he could not support either of them fully, he said.
Gupta said he believes people should be more open to hearing others’ opinions. He believes cancel culture is a big problem in the twenty-first century because people do not listen to each other, he said. “I think if both sides hear each other’s arguments, … you can find a common ground,” Gupta said.
He likes to read the work of Saagar Enjetti, a writer who works for The Hill and comments on both the Republican and Democratic sides, Gupta added. Furthermore, he believes an independent could not be president in today’s society because of how bipartisan it is, he added.
Gupta does not support the American Independent Party; however, he is a supporter and critic of certain policies on both the conservative and liberal sides. He supports immigration laws on the Republican side and climate change policies on the Democratic side. “However, I don’t like healthcare [on] the Democratic side… and on the Republican side, I don’t support lower taxes,” Gupta said.
Junior Chiruhaas Udatha said he realized he was a moderate when he was a sophomore. “I’ve taken both sides before and realized … extremist values don’t really fit me because I always … am easily convinced by both sides,” Udatha said. “I think whenever someone is on a left side or right side, … they’re less prone to understanding things. So I think being a moderate would probably be a better choice for me,” Udatha added.
He believes one thing that can make people more open is changing the culture of social media, he said. “When a lot of people who have the same political ideologies post something that they like, people from the other side become a little scared. So … stop flaming people for their posts. That is something that would help everyone,” Udatha said.
Udatha also said he wanted Donald Trump to be president over Joe Biden. Even though Trump did not put his best foot forward when it came to COVID-19, he was a better option when it came to the economy, he said. He believes Trump has made the economy better, and, therefore, we should stick with the president who has improved the economy in the past, he added.
Junior Sobhan Pandey said he has been a Trump supporter since 2018. The reason he decided to become an advocate for Trump is because he liked his immigration and economic policies, Pandey said. However, he does not like how Trump has referred to climate change as a hoax when Pandey believes that climate change is a fact, he added.
Regarding Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Pandey said he believes Trump did a good job. “He set guidelines … and our country was the first to close to outside flights,” Pandey said. Furthermore, Pandey also said he thinks that the media has stretched the truth when it comes to some of Trump’s statements. “He said something about illegal immigrants being bad, and then … the media and everyone else was like, ‘Oh, he said, Mexicans were bad.” Pandey said.
Sometimes teachers make political statements that he finds unnecessary, Pandy said. “In my experience … they’ll say … some random sentences that … probably has nothing to do with what they’re teaching, but then there’ll be … some sort of … politically-charged sentence,” Pandey said. To voice his political opinions, he joined Junior State of America (JSA), a political club on campus, he added.
Pandey also said he believes that voter fraud existed in the 2020 presidential election, but he does not know if it was enough to overturn the election results. Even though he is disappointed that Trump lost, Biden’s win will not affect him much since the Senate will likely be Republican, he said.