rowyn | A Political Quiz That's Actually Useful

A Political Quiz That's Actually Useful

I like this quiz! (Thank you,

detroitpainter!) It solicits your opinion on various issues and how important each section is. At least on my browser, it was well set-up, so that you can go back through and change various parts of your answers without having to re-take the whole thing.

And if you don't trust the quiz's results, then you can compare the candidates' positions yourself.

But what I really like about it is that it's issue-focused. I've always found it surprisingly hard to find out what candidates stand for (contributing, I'm sure, to my perception that they don't stand for anything.) So it was great to see a site refering to drilling in the ANWR and immigration policies, instead of Dean's post-primary whoop or Bush's flight jacket. :P

Bear in mind the quiz always ranks at least one person at 100% -- that's "your closest match" not "he thinks just like you".

Bush: 100%
Lieberman: 89%
Edwards: 87%
Dean: 83%
Kerry: 82%
Clark: 81%
Sharpton: 71%
Kucinich: 61%

If I play with my issue weightings, I can get the top five selections to within 8 percentage points of each other. It looks like I'm a bit more conservative-leaning than I thought, but overall, it confirms my general suspicion: for my purposes, they're all equally good.

Or equally bad.

I'll probably vote for Michael Badnarik. I don't agree with him on everything, either, but he's on the same side as me on more issues than any of the people listed in the quiz were.

Anyone else know some third-party candidates worth looking at? Or reasons to prefer one of the candidates above? As you can see, my vote is rather teetering. I'm almost one of that rare breed of "fence sitters" you hear so much about. ;)

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Ranging from 61% to 100%, and they're "all equally good"? I guess I'd have to see what kinds of issues and questions were on this quiz to get any real feel for just how meaningful (or not) this quiz might be.

Well, there's a link to the quiz from my post, if you want to look. :)

What I mean by "equally good" is that

(a) Bush is not 100% aligned with my views, nor is Lieberman 89%. The quiz does some kind of calculation on who comes closest to matching my views and my stated priorities, and ranks that person as a "100% match", which IMHO is a very misleading way to do it.

(b) I'd weight the statistical significance on these number a +/-15%, at least. To get these numbers, I weighted all issues as "equally important". But all issues aren't "equally important" to me; it's just that they didn't break out neatly along the categories I got offered. Gun rights are important to me; the death penalty isn't. But those fell into the same category on the quiz, and I couldn't rate one as meaningful and the other as not meaningful. So that makes the quiz's results less reliable.

The distinction between Bush, Sharpton, and Kuchinich is large enough that I'd be willing to say, yes, I'd distinctly prefer Bush to either of the later. But Edwards, Kerry, Dean, and Lieberman are all close enough in the ranks that I'm not sure they would serve me worse. (Actually, things I've heard that Dean said about the Iraq occupation are disturbing enough that I probably wouldn't want him as president, but I'd need to do more research to be sure).

Anyway, my overall point is that, in reality, I disagree with Republicans on a bunch of things, and Democrats on a different bunch of things, and agree with each side, usually on issues that they don't agree with each other about.

If that makes any sense. :)

Yeah, I think that makes sense now, especially as I re-read your post. I just wasn't reading it carefully enough, and misunderstood the nature of the quiz. (And I suppose I should have seen red flags shoot up at the idea of BUSH being a 100% MATCH. I think I'm fairly conservative, but I sincerely doubt that I would be a 100% match with Bush.)

The weird thing is, on generic political tests, I usually come out at "Extreme Moderate". (Dead-center on the left-right spectrum.) But, like you, I do have extreme opinions on some things, and they're often partisan opposites (which results in the "moderate" average). So I was a bit surprised when Kerry came out at 100% for my results.

And I was also surprised that Bush came out to 55% for me.

Perhaps it's the differences of opinion I've had with him as of late. Of course, I've also always hated those "Strongly/Mildly/No Opinion" voting ranges. It makes it hard to accurately gauge your results. Because I looked at Kerry's fact sheet, and based on that part, I don't know that I would vote for him.

I just want a president who isn't going to lie to me.

And then I want an insurance agency that isn't going to give me the run-around, followed by a delicious pastry that isn't going to make me fat.

I didn't get 100 percent for anyone.
78% each for the Dems and 10% for Dubbya.

When I took this, the candidates lined up nearly in the same order ... however, I picked the "extreme" choices very often, which made my "spread" greater.

I think what they must do is "normalize" the scores, so that one's closest match comes out to 100%.

I picked extremes in many cases, too. (The only times I didn't pick an extreme were on issues that I felt I didn't know enough to be certain where I stood.) I strongly suspect that the greater spread between your best-worst matches and mine is the result of differences on the issues.

As examples of my "liberal" positions, I am:
--in favor of abortion
--in favor of gay marriage (this is complicated, but it works out to "in favor")
--opposed to government involvement in religion (I think it's bad for government and religion, frankly)
--opposed to the death penalty (this is a practical, not a moral opposition -- I don't think the death penalty can be applied fairly in this country. All other considerations aside, there are too many people who should serve on juries but are morally opposed to the death penalty and would refuse to apply it.)
--opposed to the Patriot Act
--in favor of more and simpler immigration (this is apparently one of the areas where only Sharpton and Kucinich agree with me)

In most other areas that the quiz covered, I am basically conservative. But I'm definitely a mix-and-match sort of person when it comes to politics. ;)

Oh -- and I forgot to thank you in my post for the link! Thank you. :)

Yes, I see now how you would come up with those results, then.

It is very hard for folks in your position, I would assume, because with any political party, the platform is going to have some planks that go against your beliefs ... you then are tempted either to become apathetic, or else you involve yourself in the calculus of lesser evils.

I have one IRL friend whom I've written about briefly in my LJ who (to my mind) holds to a rather radical socialist position on labor issues, but is also radically anti-abortion. In his case, it stems from an attempt to live as a consistent Roman Catholic. He doesn't seem to like any political candidate, as far as I've been able to figure out.

It's interesting to note that, were this a big Republican primary year, Bush would likely fall last on my list. I was an Alan Keyes supporter last time around.

Interesting!

I have to wonder though, how it calculates "100%" when I don't agree with the candidate 100% on some of the issues, and (I don't think there are 100 questions either.)

Far more interesting to me was the bit at the end, where you could see the candidates positions side by side in a grid.

There it's not telling me what to think of a candidate, I can see what he thinks and match it up with my own internal sense of priorities and values.

Yeah, the quiz was sort of neat, but the grid is a better tool, because that way you don't have to lump your priorities on, say, abortion, with those of gay marriage. Or your priority on tax cuts with drilling in the ANWR. It's just possible that one of those things might matter to you more than the other! :)

that's "your closest match" not "he thinks just like you".

Indeed. Should I let you imagine what I entered to get the following?

Lieberman Score: 100%
Clark Score: 99%
Kerry Score: 95%
Dean Score: 92%
Sharpton Score: 92%
Kucinich Score: 90%
Edwards Score: 87%
Bush Score: 43%

Hint: I set "The Economy/Environment" to maximum and let the others float one notch above "no opinion".

Huh. It pegged me as far more liberal than I am:

1. Kucinich -- 100%
2. Sharpton -- 96%
3. Kerry -- 84%
4. Dean -- 83%
5. Clark -- 80%
6. Edwards -- 78%
7. Lieberman -- 64%
8. Bush -- 13%

My politics really are amidst the Kerry-Dean-Clark-Edwards group of Democrats, not THAT liberal!

Yeah, that's more like what I might expect from, say, Postrodent than you. ;) Obviously, a few bugs in the system!

I haven't taken the quiz -- but your politics and mine are sort of complementary, aren't they? ];-)

I'd think there were two aspects to such a determination:
-- what you think about a particular issue, and
-- how important this issue is to you compared to others.

It appears that a large number of people are voting for candidates based on "anything but Bush" -- and their perceptions of issues are being submerged into guesses about the candidates' national viability. It's not much of a reflection of importance of issues, is it?

===|==============/ Level Head

I won't deny that Bush is, politically, nearly my polar opposite. (And, yeah -- you and I do disagree on political issues. Thank heavens, natural sciences have a more fair arbiter!)

On the other hand, I consider political quizzes like that one to be the opposite of the 'anything but Bush' philosophy. An 'anyone but Bush' supporter would vote for any candidate that they feel could win the national election, and ignores personal beliefs. This quiz's philosophy is to find the candidate closest to personal beliefs, and ignore which candidate would be most likely to win the national election.

Yes, that's what I like about the quiz. It does offer a "political party" weighting, but assuming you don't pick one, it's (theoretically) neutral on viability, party, and personality issues.

I look forward to seeing it after the primaries -- the site says it'll be updated then to include third-party candidates. Should be cool!

I agree about the quiz -- I was thinking of it in counterpoint to the actual practice going on in the Democratic primaries.

And I heartily agree about the "fair arbiter" nature of the scientific method. I was arguing with someone last week who was making rather silly assertions about carbon dating -- it was straightforward to show the truth. But this cannot work with UFO believers -- they can always say "well THAT might have been a hoax but my uncle really saw one!"

Politics is somewhere in between -- but still contentious. I try to approach it as I do the science topics -- and in so doing, I have learned that a lot of what everybody knows about the world situation ranges from badly distorted to utterly wrong.

Whether abortion is "wrong", to pick a topic, is not something that can be proven scientifically. But what, say, John Kerry said in 1997 in support of the unilateral removal of Saddam Hussein can be.

And the predicted range of effects of the Kyoto protocol is an issue of fact. The predictions might not ultimately turn out, but it is a fact that they made certain predictions.

I do spend more time with science than politics; it just happens that in trying to preserve the teaching of science in science classes, politics is a necessary component of the process.

===|==============/ Level Head

One problem with any survey is that it matters why a candidate believes what he does.

For example, I favor drilling in ANWR. I don't consider it a remotely close question based on the level of environmental risk and the potential economic gain (an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil extractable at a $25/bl world price even according to http://www.wri.org/climate/anwr.html which does not favor drilling). Of course, this is in the context of a fairly limited (2000 acres of actual drilling) and environmentally sensitive plan (e.g. attempting to restrict most activities to avoid migration patterns).

Now let's look at some background. States which were more recently admitted to the US have a much higher fraction of federally owned an controlled land than those which were in the country for longer. This reaches an extreme with Alaska which has a sizable majority of federal land. I happen to believe that this whole approach to environmental conservation is wrong and that Alaskans should have far more of a voice than they do in making this decision since they will be most strongly affected by the consequences both good and bad (incidentally, the little I've heard from Alaskan politicians and surveys suggests that they would strongly favor drilling). In some ways, I see the very existence of this as a purely Federal decision as a sign of poor environmental policy.

ANWR has also become a litmus test issue for environmentalists signaling the degree to which politicians regard the environment as more important than economic or other considerations. By that standard, I also favor drilling, and would still favor drilling if the available extraction technology made those 2,000 acres (but no other area) look like they had been hit by a nuclear weapon (don't worry -- the actual process isn't remotely like that and will probably leave those 2,000 acres looking much as they do now: like an uninhabited lunar landscape). Alaska has about 375 million acres of land. Opening 2,000 of them to drilling is not that significant an environmental impact even if we allow for the roads and pipelines which will be build and increased shipping necessary to support the drilling.

None of this is to say that I don't regard protecting the environment as one of the interests which is legitimately a part of development decisions. I'm just very disappointed at the way that cost/benefit analyses are typically done on environmental questions. Just because we happen to be starting from a baseline where Alaska mostly consists of wilderness doesn’t mean that we should automatically prefer that. Perhaps we don’t have enough wilderness on the East Coast, but that doesn’t mean that Alaska’s people might not be better off with less.

A politician could be a strident environmentalist in his general attitude towards the tradeoffs which are appropriate between economic development and environmental protection while still favoring drilling in ANWR (based on my perception of the gains and losses). The fact that I don't know of any such politicians may be a question of this being a litmus test issue. So, litmus tests aside, I'd want to understand his reasoning before I assumed that someone who supported drilling agreed with me.

I certainly see your point. While it doesn't much matter for that particular issue why they are in agreement with me, a politician isn't going to be making decisions on only a handful of political questions. The "why" will help tell you how they're going to act on other issues. Since far more issues are not addressed than are, the "why" is at least as important as the "what".

Still, it does give me more information about candidate positions, and in a more digestible form, than has filtered down to me by any other means so far. I really liked Badarnik's "issues" page for his more detailed breakdown. hmm. Now I'm wondering if the other candidates have similar pages and I just haven't found them. It seems like I looked once before and wasn't happy with the information I could locate, but I haven't tried recently.

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A Political Quiz That's Actually Useful

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Didn't get 100%

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Details Matter

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