Comments on: Where are you on the political compass?

By: Simon Jester

Simon Jester — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 16:36:19 +0000

Personally, I’ve never been terribly impressed with Political Compass – I think the World’s Smallest Political Quiz:
http://www.self-gov.org/wspq.html
is much more accurate. It’s also a lot shorter.

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By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 16:36:58 +0000

Where do I Stand On The Political Compass! Well I stand for the human race and what that represents.

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By: Monkey

Monkey — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 16:07:37 +0000

The questions are a little bit loaded, ie “should globalisation benefit corporations or the people?”

This is to suggest that what is good for corporations isn’t good for the people, that one tends to benefit at the expense of the other, which is nonsense as anybody who has grasped the principles of Adam Smiths ‘invisible hand’ will know. (invisible hand eh? I can imagine where that would be useful ;-p)

At the end when they show you where famous politicians would stand, they have Maggie Thatcher (a neo-liberal) right next to Hitler! (a totalitarian national socialist) rendering their entire spectrum inept.

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By: Simon Holledge

Simon Holledge — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 14:54:35 +0000

Macarnie: ” I believe the original quiz was formulated to suit the American political scene. Was this the case?”

The (anonymous?) author is stated to be ‘UK-based’, but he was obviously trying to make the test as widely applicable as possible. Almost anybody who runs a website (as opposed to a blog) will find that the majority of his/her readers are north American. In the case of my sites it’s about 80 per cent.

He also offers to make localized versions to suit different countries. I would expect any test written by one person would have bias. In this case, there is perhaps a bias towards the bottom left quadrant.

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By: Simon Holledge

Simon Holledge — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 14:02:19 +0000

Melissa: ” . . . about the Paul Martin score”

Exactly the position of the 1972 Conservatives. Congratulations and welcome back to the great Tory party of . . . Edward Heath! (Are you also a squash player, I wonder? That would be splendid.)

“You are in the highly spiritual department”

Thank you, that’s right. I am an atheist, but I’ve spent a lot of time in temples. Archaeologists can’t be superstitious, but I like romantic operas where the singers refer interminably to heaven, ‘O ciel, o ciel etc.’.

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By: melissa

melissa — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:09:14 +0000

That is surprising, Mac!

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By: Macarnie

Macarnie — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:24:55 +0000

I had, what for me , was a surprising result: Left=-1
Libertarian -0.65. (I had expected to be seen as a raving Right winger.) It was suggested that I vote Green, but I’ll not be yellow, and vote my normal Blue.
I believe the original quiz was formulated to suit the American political scene.Was this the case?

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By: melissa

melissa — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 16:36:44 +0000

Simon

Top right quadrant – just in at about the Paul Martin score

You are in the highly spiritual department Simon, well done!

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By: David Russell

David Russell — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 11:41:53 +0000

The problem with Chris Lightfoot’s test is that is has an incredibly inaccurate BNP sample which he refuses to remove or even fix, so anyone who is not a socialist gets classified as BNP.

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By: Murky.org

Murky.org — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 10:27:37 +0000

The Times has prettified the ‘Political Compass’

The Times has put a new version of the ‘Political Compass’ online. This time it has pretty pictures attached. The Times version is here Some of the questions didn’t give me a good option to answer, so was ‘best approximation’….

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