A Political Quiz That's Actually Useful

[rowyn]

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. ;)

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

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.

Re:

[rowyn]

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. :)

Re:

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

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.)

Re:

[krud42.livejournal.com]

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.

Didn't get 100%

[(Anonymous)]

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