Speakout.com has a great political quiz that gives you a good understanding of where you lie on the political spectrum and which candidates most match your views. This is probably the best online political quiz I’ve ever taken. It gives you detailed descriptions on each issue and is clearly less biased than the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, or as I like to call it the World’s Smallest Government Political Quiz because of its bias towards the Libertarian Party. With very little surprise, my answers resulted in the label of "Hard-Core Libertarian." This means that my personal score was 70% (Liberals and libertarians agree in choosing the less-government for personal issues). My economic score was 84% (Conservatives and libertarians agree in choosing the less-government on economic issues).
The candidates I was closest to were Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party and former Republican Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party. John McCain is 12% closer to my views than Barack Obama. Interestingly, Ralph Nader and the Socialist Party candidate were closer than Obama as well.
As of now I’m not sure what this means for my vote in November. Clearly McCain is the closer of the two main stream candidates, but as I have mentioned before, I’m not too worried about wasting my vote. Also, when voting for the President, it is also important to put more focus on foreign policy, not the economy, since that is where the majority of their power lies.
I've taken those as well, but my favorite is http://www.politicalcompass.org/
ReplyDeleteI've read this one is better, but I've never taken it:
http://politics.beasts.org/
Yeah I took the political compass one, but its questions can be too vague, here are some examples:
ReplyDelete"If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations."
trans-national corporations are owned and run by humans
"there is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment."
sure, but does that make me more of a democrat or republican?
"controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment."
I'm getting a masters in Economics and I don't really understand the relevance of that question
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the other quiz you mentioned seems to have similar problems:
"Correct grammar is important."
"Our nation has a glorious history."
"Members of society needn't be familiar with the history and traditions of our culture."
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I guess I see political differences best described on an issue basis
Oh also, Justin I think some of our readers would be interested in knowing how these quizzes describe YOUR political affiliations (based on some of your comments, I had someone suggest that you are farther left than I predict you are).
ReplyDeleteYeah, all the quizzes have problems. I like the compass one because it graphs the answer on a 2 dimensional plane.
ReplyDeleteHaha well I've been trying to have an open mind towards left-leaning ideas. My #1 guy on the Speakout quiz was Johnny McCain. I took the compass one a long time ago and I don't remember where I was. I'll have to take it again soon.