Test Your Ideology

From time to time I think it is fun to revisit this topic, especially since there is a natural tendency for people to assume that mainstream means their own viewpoint.

I myself have fallen into the trap before and so to test myself for real I have gone to several of the political ideology tests on the web to find out where I really stand. I thought it might be fun for the rest of you to do the same.

One of the best sites I have found is Political Compass. This site looks at political ideology both from an economic viewpoint and also from the aspect of government and authority. It assigns you scores ranging from -10 to + 10 for each viewpoint and shows you where you stand.

In terms of interpretation of the scale I’d say that scores from 0 to 2.5 in either direction place you in the category of moderate, scores from 2.5 to 7.5 in either direction place you in some form of mainstream liberal/conservative and anything beyond 7.5 puts you in the extreme category (since by definition of the scale -10 or +10 are as far over as you can get and include folks like Hitler/Stalin/etc). It is an international quiz so you are able to compare yourself to people around the world.

If course most of the questions are subject to interpretation and so if you take the test 3 or 4 times in a week you are likely to get slightly different scores each time. But it seems that there is a fairly small range to your scores.

The second test is Vote Match and is geared more to US politics. You answer a series of questions and it matches you to Presidential candidates or members of the Senate. Again, there is a degree of interpretation but it is also a fun quiz.

So take the tests and post your scores.

Just to start the ball rolling, when I took the Compass test I ended up with a small range of scores but my economic results tended to be in the 1-3 range while my authority result ranged in the 0 to -2 range. So in all cases I ended up as a moderate but with a slight left tilt on authority and a slight right tilt on economics.

In the Match quiz I looked to Senate members (there is a choice to show your top and bottom 10 Senate matches) and interestingly ended up with an equal match of GOP and Dems in my top 10 but mostly GOP in the bottom.

So chime on in folks


Author: PATRICK EDABURN, Assistant Editor
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