A free site for finding out where you lean politically and watching how that changes over time, through a quiz, reactions to news stories and the heated debates people argue about most.

By counting. Your leaning is the orientation with the most of your answers, and every quiz question and story answer counts once. Debate marks don't change it: each sits on its own debate's line, not on the six orientations. When two or three orientations are within a few answers of each other, we say you're split between them instead of picking one; when four or more are that close, we say your answers are spread out. Your My leaning page shows every count. (Until October 2026 the leaning was a weighted average instead.)

They're three ways of answering, in the order you meet them. Gut questions ask for your instinct, before the reasons catch up. Heart questions ask what you feel. Head questions ask what you'd argue for, reasoned out. They don't always agree, and the results show where they differ.

Every answer moves it a little, so new story reactions, debate marks and retakes all shift it. That's the point: your drift over time shows how your views move rather than freezing them on one day.

We work hard for it not to be. Each answer is written to sound like its orientation at its most reasonable, the order is shuffled every time, and an outside fairness review is being arranged. The descriptions and positions are approximations, and we'd like to hear where one reads as unfair.

Only you. The database blocks every other account from reading them, including admins. Others only see totals with no names attached, such as a debate's community average once at least 5 people have marked it. The person who runs the site can reach the database directly for maintenance.

No. You can take the quiz and try everything without one, but nothing is saved to an account; your latest quiz result is kept in your browser only. A free account keeps your answers so you can track your leaning across devices and over time.

Yes. "See your last result" on the homepage opens your latest one, and "Your quizzes" on your My leaning page lists every result you've saved. You can also change how you described yourself before a quiz.

From straight-news newsrooms (AP, NPR, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News and The Hill), politics only, with opinion pieces left out. Stories rotate every few days. The headline is the outlet's own; the short summary under it is ours, written with AI (Google Gemini) from the outlet's article to stick to the facts and say who claimed what. The questions for each story are drafted the same way. Our team can edit both, and "Read the full story" takes you to the outlet's original.

Some debates, like the Epstein files or data centers, don't split along left and right, so placing them on that scale would be misleading. Marks on those still count toward your reflections but not your leaning.

A map of how people taking part lean, state by state, and how they mark each heated debate. It counts people who have set their state in their profile, never shows names, and shows a state only once at least 25 people from it take part. It describes people using How I Lean, not everyone who lives in a state, so it isn't a poll.

Open Settings from your account menu and choose Delete account. Your account, quiz results, story reactions, debate marks and Show of hands answers are removed for good.

It's independent, with no ads and no selling of data, so it relies on donations from the people who use it.