USA Electoral Compass

It’s not bad but often annoying- several questions are disjunctive or conjunctive in a way such that there is no logical implication from one part to the other and that makes it hard, if not impossible, to give a good answer since “tend to agree” doesn’t mean “agree to one half of a conjunct”, I’d think. Similarly, for questions like, “all illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay permanently in the US” degree of belief in the statement doesn’t really capture the relavent posibilities- I probably “strongly disagree” that _all_ illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay permanently in the US but I “strongly agree” that a very large percentage of them ought to. That doesn’t really fit any of the answers, though. There were similar problems with many other questions. Maybe they balance out in the end but I find such things quite annoying.

I think that tight clustering reflects reality, though. The differences among the Democratic candidates are largely rhetorical. For example, if you just looked at their Senate voting records, you’d never guess that Edwards was the “populist” candidate and Clinton the “establishment” candidate.
This is a big part of the problem with the Democratic Party- the range of “acceptable” opinion is very narrow, a very tepid sort of liberalism marks its leftmost boundary.

Yeah those questions are always annoying, much like the http://www.politicalcompass.org/test. Like what exactly does ‘completely’ illegal in “Abortion should be made completely illegal” mean, and if it means what it usually mean are there any candidates except for like 2 which would ‘strongly support’ it? And isn’t there some iron rule about never using the word ‘never’ in surveys?

Also the way that ‘closeness’ is computed seems to be suspect. Not surprisingly I wound up in the upper right (it’s lonely out there). Apparently the furthest candidate from me is Fred Thompson (with Huckabee being close to second from last) which isn’t surprising. But the ‘closest’ candidate is supposed to be John Edwards, who out of the major Democratic contenders I would be the least likely to vote for. But when they draw the circle (presidential candidate indifference curve!) it hits Ron Paul, and probably Obama well before Edwards.

Also I think it strange that Hillary is supposed to be to the left of Edwards on economic issues and below Obama on social issues.

Also also, if you answer neutral to everything you’re supposed to vote Ron Paul.

Here is the different ranking.

And this is very important:
Yet it may well be that if I would have had the right to vote, I wouldn’t want to lose the historical chance to vote for a female or black American president

I came out closest to Obama, which is a bit surprising– I think of myself as closer to Edwards than to Obama– but I was in the middle of the rather tight Dem grouping, which is not a surprise.

Overall, the spread of the Republican candidates compared with the tight grouping of the Democrats is somewhat surprising since conventional wisdom suggests the opposite. Also, CW says Clinton is least lefty and Edwards is most with Obama unclear. Personally, I tend to see the Republican candidates (Ron Paul excepted) as an undifferentiated shitpile, but I realize that that’s just me.

notsneaky, I remember that graph from another site. Someone had removed everything not authoritarian and right wing from the graph (including Kucinich and Gravel I guess) and replaced it with the text ‘There be dragons’. It certainly is interesting that basically american politics (Ron Paul aside) comes up being a single axis even when measured in two dimensions: basically, how much of a right wing authoritarian are you?

mattf, isn’t that just a factor of increasing uncertainty over distance (philosophical/political in this instance). Two people standing 50m apart around 1km away from you look closer together than a couple of people right next to you that are standing only a few metres apart. Probably explains why all the Democrats look the same to me, the same as the Republicans all seem pretty much identical.

stuart–

I suppose so– I certainly can’t resolve a difference between Thompson’s views and Romney’s views. On the other hand (thinking about it now) the fact that most Democrats would be willing to vote for any of the Democratic candidates, while most Republicans are divided in their loyalties suggests that the Electoral Compass people have a point.

“Why is it important—because you think this should be an illegitimate factor when voting, or because you think this will play a significant role in the elections?”

It is important because I think it should be a LEGITIMATE factor when voting and because it might play a significant role.

After answering all of the questions, I was annoyed to find that they didn’t include all of the Democratic candidates. For a poll that includes more current issues and all current candidates (Kucinich and Gravel are included, as well as Dodd and Biden, who have since dropped out), try> Candidate Comparison. This one shows the list of disagreements with each candidate, so you can see whether an important or key issue crops up there.

Much as many of the commenters above, I found the questions underdetermining of my answers (if I may put it that way). That being said, I was struck that the Compass accurately tracked my own assessment of which candidate most shared my policy preferences: Obama.

Which is a bit awkward for me, since I don’t believe minorities or women should be president.

Someone already mentioned http://www.politicalcompass.org which has a far more accurate grid and which includes all of the candidates, not just some. I also wanted to mention http://www.glassbooth.org which is very similar to the site mentioned in the original post, in that the quiz matches you with a candidate, but it includes more candidates such as Kucinich and Gravel.

I was annoyed by some of the questions. How helpful is “Abortion should be made completely illegal”? I’m pretty hardcore pro-life and I don’t even believe that. And a statement like that doesn’t fit easily into the ‘partially agree’ system so what are you left with?

And of course the drug question is just depressing in how it works out.

Why does supporting gun control place you as a social conservative? I regard myself as having a conservative view about guns — in a reasonably well-functioning reasonably just state citizens should not have guns. The idea that there is some basic right to have a gun seems liberal, and wrong, to me. So I should have turned out more socially conservative than I did, I think.

Harry,

Do you mean “Why does -supporting- opposing gun control place you as a social conservative?”

I think it is because of the rest of your statement. I’d say that the biggest difference IMO between “liberal” and “conservative” (American sense for both) views is that conservatives DON’T assume a reasonably-just, reasonably-well-functioning state. Thus, our primary concern is that the state not destroy the trustable institutions.

Contrary to other readers, I found the test to be much more reasonable than most of the other online political tests that I have come across (including http://www.politicalcompass.org). One curiosity, however, is that the test indicated that I was closest to Obama on the political landscape, but that I nevertheless was in more “substantive agreement” with Edwards. If you click on the pencil located at your position on the compass, the test offers a breakdown of your position measured relative to those of the other candidates. There I am told that I am in 81% substantive agreement with Obama, but I am also in 83% substantive agreement with Edwards, despite Obama being the candidate “closest” to me. I’m not sure which is supposed to matter more: closeness or level of substantive agreement? Nevertheless, I was happy to see that the test offers issue-by-issue comparisons with each of the candidates, which makes interpreting its positioning more straightforward than doing so for a test like the political compass, which obscures its methods of determining a person’s position on its compass.

Ingrid, I can’t believe you’d say, “I wouldn’t want to lose the historical chance to vote for a female or black American president, even if on substance, my views apparently are slightly closer to the views of Edwards”. Would you have voted for Thatcher for the same reasons? Or Indira Gandhi, or Golda Meir? All of them adopting men’s manners to get elected…

And Hillary is really riding on Bill’s coattails (all those people with “I miss Bill” T-shirts). A feminist like you would actually say that it is ok that a woman get elected on the basis of having been married to a former president?

My favorite question was the one about whether better teachers should be paid more than their colleagues. Not just yes, but Hell Yes! I don’t even care if its the bad teachers than make more than the good ones, just pay somebody more so everybody has to suck up for money like the rest of us.

I scored precisely in the middle on the social scale, I got assigned to Ron Paul. There sure is a vacuum of moderation if Ron Paul is what you get for being in the middle on social issues.

Although, I admit I’m not the typical demographic in that I want universal health care and also a tax increase on the poor to pay for it. (After all if they are the ones getting more coverage then shouldn’t they get the added cost. I guess I’m an moderoauthoritybertarian.

I thought the European mindset came out in the lack of questions about race and religion. Little about prayer in schools, ten commandments in public places, affirmative action, etc.

On the issue I feel most strongly about, Getting The Hell Out of Iraq”, I should be supporting Ron Paul. I am not stupid enough for that. I may have mostly neutral feelings about most of the issues the questions covered but in no way does that make me a Ron Paul supporter.
The elephant in the room that is not addressed is our overwhelming support for anything that Israel does. As long as our policy in the Mideast is driven by that fact there is nothing but another century of bad news for us and Israel in the region.

Tom, I find the comments in 39 surprising. PCA is a very well known and fairly simple concept, a reasonable undergradute assignment — so I must assume that “too few people have the combination of statistical and programming skill” should be interpreted as meaning polysci types haven’t paid much attention to basic tools in other disciplines (quite plausible).

However, these sorts of Karhunen-Loève approaches are hardly a silver bullet. There are some strong underlying assumptions and the orthogonality constraint might better be traded for independence (i.e. ICA vs PCA), just off the top of my head. I’m certainly not saying that this sort of approach isn’t interesting to apply to a survey like this.

I agree with those upthread who have suggested Political Compass is more accurate. It is far from perfect, but I find it quite plausible. And not only for the USA.

For what it is worth, Electoral Compass put me closest to Obama. But I really do not believe their relative ranking of the candidates–the Dems that is; the Reps’ positions seem OK. I wonder why that is.

Oh, and what “sg” said about the healthcare questions.