Thursday, September 23, 2004 AD
Political plotting
Brian has an interesting link to the World's Smallest Political Quiz. Taking it just now, I ended up firmly in the "Centrist" camp:
A fuller political self-test can be found at The Political Compass (update: link now fixed), which has about six pages of questions which it then uses to plot your political position on two axes, Left/Right and Libertarian/Authoritarian. When I first took this test around three years ago, I scored about -3 or -4 on the Left/Right axis (i.e. well to the left of centre), and about -1 or -2 on the Libertarian/Authoritarian axis (all scores are out of ten). By yesterday, this had changed to +3.75 Left/Right, -0.05 Libertarian/Authoritarian - which seems pretty consistent with the WSPQ result.
It's worth comparing this with the Political Compass site's estimated plots of UK political parties' positions on the compass, and of US presidential candidates' positions (the British/European perspective of the Political Compass can probably be seen in the fact that both Kerry and Bush are depicted as being some way to the right of centre).
It will be seen from the US chart that, in American terms, I've moved from Ralph Nader territory to somewhere between Bush and Kerry, though slightly more "libertarian" than either of them - similar to my position relative to New Labour and the Conservatives, in the UK chart. Mind you, it's easy for a "civilian" to be more libertarian than an elected politician, given that (i) I don't have to "appeal" to the law'n'order vote, and (ii) I can oppose ID cards without having to be the one who ends up being blamed for the next terrorist atrocity (or House of Commons security bungle).
I'd be interested to know how other people score on both the WSPQ and the Political Compass, and whether you feel those results accurately reflect your views. Do leave any feedback in the comments section. In my next post, I'll try to explain my own "lurch to the right".
Centrists favor selective government intervention and emphasize what they commonly describe as "practical solutions" to current problems. They tend to keep an open mind on political issues. Many centrists feel that government serves as a check on excessive liberty.I can live with that description, though the accompanying chart showed me edging very slightly in the direction of "Right/Conservative" and even (ye gods!) "Libertarian".
A fuller political self-test can be found at The Political Compass (update: link now fixed), which has about six pages of questions which it then uses to plot your political position on two axes, Left/Right and Libertarian/Authoritarian. When I first took this test around three years ago, I scored about -3 or -4 on the Left/Right axis (i.e. well to the left of centre), and about -1 or -2 on the Libertarian/Authoritarian axis (all scores are out of ten). By yesterday, this had changed to +3.75 Left/Right, -0.05 Libertarian/Authoritarian - which seems pretty consistent with the WSPQ result.
It's worth comparing this with the Political Compass site's estimated plots of UK political parties' positions on the compass, and of US presidential candidates' positions (the British/European perspective of the Political Compass can probably be seen in the fact that both Kerry and Bush are depicted as being some way to the right of centre).
It will be seen from the US chart that, in American terms, I've moved from Ralph Nader territory to somewhere between Bush and Kerry, though slightly more "libertarian" than either of them - similar to my position relative to New Labour and the Conservatives, in the UK chart. Mind you, it's easy for a "civilian" to be more libertarian than an elected politician, given that (i) I don't have to "appeal" to the law'n'order vote, and (ii) I can oppose ID cards without having to be the one who ends up being blamed for the next terrorist atrocity (or House of Commons security bungle).
I'd be interested to know how other people score on both the WSPQ and the Political Compass, and whether you feel those results accurately reflect your views. Do leave any feedback in the comments section. In my next post, I'll try to explain my own "lurch to the right".
