For the last few hundred years, political orientation has been measured with one dimention—left to right. A British group, The Political Compass (keep an eye out for where the British and American spellings differ), was the first to propose a two-dimensional system. They have retained the left–right (economic) axis and added an orthogonal social axis with libertarians on one side and authoritarians on the other.
Where do you think you fit on such a plane? Political Compass has organized a survey to test your views on a variety of subjects and see where you really line up.
There have been some who are concerened that Political Compass’ results are slanted. Political Compass has essentially ignored requests for more openness into how they score the questions and develop the results. Political Compass says it generates its income from sponsorship and seminars and cannot release this information without compromising its viability.
Chris Lightfoot didn't like this situation, so he designed his own, similar political survey. Unlike Political Compass, he shows all of his linear algebra methodology. He also shows all the statements he uses in their positive and contrapositive forms.
I would strongly recommend you not look at either the eigenvectors or the statement list pages until after you have taken the survey.
Chris’ survey consists of 75 questions; Political Compass’ has a few less. Both are split into 6 pages worth of survey. Both are similar in the sense that they make statements and ask whether you agree or disagree.
Where do you stack up against political celebrities like Adolf Hitler or Tony Blair? Political Compass has slightly different results on their analysis page (remember the comment about skewed results?). Another interesting comparison is the mapping of the 2004 US Presidential Primary Candidates.
I took Chris Lightfoot’s survey twice. For some of the questions, my position allowed the question to be answered more than one way. I added the blue dot to represent the region where I think similar surveys should place me. Political Compass’ survey placed me a little more to the left than Lightfoot’s.
