I have been a good influence on you bro.

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-7.12, -6.62. Awwww yeahhh.

And to those of you wondering the validity of this test: Who knows, but I sure seem to be in the same vicinity as political figures I agree with. And I seem to stay around there, albeit with a bit of understandable drift from changing life experiences.

The whole issue of providing a "neutral" or "no opinion" though kinda depends on who you're talking to, from my experience. Sociologists and political scientists seem to be more likely to have an even numbered scale, but psychologists tend to be completely against those with the explanation of "We KNOW there's a middle option". Truth is, if you're after polarizing data, it makes sense (to me at least) to use a scale without that neutral standpoint. It's an ongoing debate though.

Fun fact:

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This questionnaire is flawed in certain places, I felt that some of the questions were poorly worded and required an example as context to be answered properly.

Anyway:

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"What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."- The last words of General John Sedgewick, killed by a sniper in the American civil war

Sometimes, poor wording is something you have to deal with on questionnaires, because none of them are perfect. These aren't straight up questions, they're statements of beliefs that you either agree with or you don't; any examples they would provide would only introduce bias into the measure. I know it'd be pretty hard for me to write an example of (or even pick) a political issue that can be exclusively taken one way or the other. And I doubt answering one question wrong has much of an effect on your score; I think this particular test has a number of sub scales within it, meaning that there's some redundancy. One question probably isn't going to move your dot all that far.

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Not surprised by the results. I've always been around that area.

bartoron

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Current. Scored this twice

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Road to Insane Final Boss

Hey, me too! My answers to many questions pulled me farther right than you, but my stance on various other things like drug legalization pulled it back to pretty much the center.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/printab ... &soc=-5.79


I was wondering, without reading through the topic, if anyone noticed that on the graph that plots Presidential Candidates from this year's election looks a little odd.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/crowdch ... 0.38,-5.79


Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are almost identical in their actual stances as far as this chart plots them. Significantly, they're both far to the upper-right (Authoritarian-Right). Then again, I think Gary Johnson should also be 3-4 points down on the chart towards Libertarian (the side of the chart I plot on).

Yes, that's right - the only two presidential candidates whose names you ever heard are in practice almost identical. Seems a little bit pre-determined, if you ask me. But I answered "Strongly Disagree" to the question about "learning to deal with the establishment", so that tells you a bit about where I lie politically.


Nice!

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They actually talk a bit about that in the frequently asked questions, but I think it comes down to the wackiness of American politics. I only know a little about political science (and I know better than to take the classes on it at my school) but as I understand it a two-party system is completely non-representative of the actual spectrum of political stances; if you're socially liberal, you're expected to be economically liberal as well. This means that if you want to be president, you HAVE to claim you believe both of these things to get an endorsement regardless of what you actually think.

I guess Obama's actions in office tend to lean toward progressivism socially, but he's still highly conservative economically (which is why he's far right in that sense). If he was actually really far left, he probably wouldn't have bailed out the auto companies. And there's only so far a guy whose job description is to be "top of the executive pyramid" can go toward the anarchist end of a spectrum (meaning he's going to float in the same area as every other president from recent years). Thus, just about as far right as anyone else, and just about as far north. And the other thing you need to remember is that charts aren't actually as informative as you'd think: What's the difference between somebody who wants stricter regulations on corporate monopolies but who doesn't care about their taxation, and somebody who wants the opposite (assuming these equate to the same things on the scale)? You would never know from number alone, and it's possible that Obama just happens to be conservative on completely different issues from Romney.[/endbaselessopinions]

Here's the official argument from the site though: http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012
It seems... just a teensy bit biased to me from the tone they use, but they do make good points.

It does raise a good question about whether or not this measure is accurate to how one would act in government positions though. I bet that Obama probably would score quite a bit closer to the middle if he were to take the compass test, but I'm not entirely sure that it would correlate so much with his actions in office. It's a bit more common with tests than you'd think; I just came across similar issues twice this quarter with a measure of mindfulness and several measures of creativity. It might be worth it for the compass team to differentiate between political BELIEFS and political BEHAVIORS (and there IS a difference between belief and behavior).

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Highly agree! What happened with Ron Paul's little-covered success during the GOP primaries shows this. If a Republican doesn't want to glass parking lot the middle east, they can't get the nomination even if they poll better head to head against the incumbent. You have to cater to either slate, then move to the center between the two, that's the formula to win and may real morality and saying what you truly stand for rot. Flipp Flopney lost because of presentation, in my opinion, but I'm indifferent because either one means war, borrowing and printing money, and the status quo. Sigh.

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