The 2016 presidential elections have been taken over by clever catchphrases, rioting on the street, and a level of bigotry from a beloved socialist, and a radical conservative who no one seems to get. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, on television seem like polar opposites based on what they believe is best for the country. However, when looking more into their policies, the similarities that these two candidates share are quite disturbing, no matter how badly the media would like to tell you otherwise.

Disclaimer: No, this is not a pro-Sanders or pro-Trump point of view. I actually have no leg in this race as my candidate with his own clever hashtag left the race far too early.

The first thing I want people to do is to watch a Donald Trump speech. Now take a shot every time he mentions a wall or blames Muslims and Mexicans for our problems.

Now that you’re done, do the same for Bernie Sanders and take a shot every time he blames the 1% for our problems or any time he mentions the word “free”.

You’ve probably taken the same number of shots for those two respective speeches, and now you can see where the similarities start.

Now whether people like to admit it or not, the 1 percent of people who own 40 percent of the wealth are in fact minority groups. According to the definition of minority, it is a small percentage of people never exceeding 50%. Just like the illegal immigrants and Muslims Donald Trump will blame, Bernie Sanders will blame the 1% for all our problems in a very similar way.

However if you think the similarities end there, you’re horribly mistaken. Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have what the media considers very radical ideas. Donald Trump wants to force Mexico to build a wall keeping Mexicans out of America and also wants to ban Muslim people from entering our country. People will ask, how can someone as wonderful as Bernie compare to such a terrible person? Well, does taxing 1 percent more than half their wealth in the interest of “fairness” seem a bit outlandish to you? Maybe, but if someone says “Hey, I see you’re making a lot of money over here. You can keep half and the rest goes to these guys over here. If that’s your idea of fair, I have questions about what you consider fair.”

When you look at both of the positions they have taken, they have been rather similar but only one of them gets all the credit for “his” way of thinking. Both of them have been against the Iraq War, both of them are currently against the “Common Core” school system and both of them have been strongly against NAFTA. Yet, it seems a bit odd that one of them is praised for those positions and the media condemns the other candidate for those same positions. And guess who’s who?

Lastly, the reasons behind people supporting these two candidates are more similar than they want to admit. People are sick and tired of the same old boring candidate with a checkered past in politics. Donald Trump is every bit of change the Republican Party needs, focusing on the power of media has and making sure he looks as good with the media as humanly possible. Whether it’s the contrast- Jeb Bush looking tired, John Kasich appearing older than he is, Marco Rubio looking too young to be in the debate and Ben Carson looking completely out of place- or something else, Trump has shown the Republican Party how to win over the media, and the delegates. With Senator Sanders it’s a very similar approach. The Democratic Socialist has taken many stances that aren’t very common and seem rather easy to take. These include his takes on health care and education, and trying to end the corruption that exists within the government. He refuses to accept the political norm of taking money from big companies, but rather accept 27 dollar donations from the average American striving to make America as great as it can be.

Both Sanders and Trump have taken extreme approaches and have had these pay off massively. Both candidates have been able to win over many people and have been able to show their respective parties how you can truly break new ground and win over the people.