Comments on: Ron Paul’s My Guy!

By: Gun Control

Gun Control — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 03:09:17 +0000

[...] Ron Paul’s My Guy!Outside Beltway - At the same time, I agree that “ Stricter gun control will not reduce crime .” This question, though, points to another problem with the survey: Negative questions. They should all be in the form of “Stricter gun control will reduce crime [...]

By: dutchmarbel

dutchmarbel — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:49:39 +0000

The electoral compass is just to get a starting point. After you've finished the questionnaire you can click on the issues (and see how the respective positions of the politicians change in the picture when you take certain issues out of the equation).
You can also click on the picture of the candidate and compare their positions with yours, how much agreement there is, and why they rank the candidate as having that positions. The latter includes links to transcripts of debates, webpage, interviews, etc.

The idea behind an electoral compass is that it is a starting point, that you can inform yourself about candidates and issues in the most convenient way.

By: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup — Pirate’s Cove

Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup — Pirate’s Cove — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:09:10 +0000

[...] Ron Paul is James Joyners candidate. Or is [...]

By: Alan Kellogg

Alan Kellogg — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 09:00:56 +0000

I'm close to Ron Paul myself, according to the test. It gives me the strong feeling that the test designers made assumptions about people who answered certain ways. Such as being a creationist God annoying racist if you support the war in Iraq. So once again we see how prejudice ruins an idea once again.

By: humanliberty

humanliberty — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:43:40 +0000

Contributors to this quiz:

Netwerk: a Dutch government-funded left-wing TV show. Free University amsterdam: a left-wing university. "coolpolitics": some lame Dutch initiative that wants to make politics "cool" for Dutch youth (win more left-wing votes). De Volkskrant, a socialist newspaper.

They all seem like very trustworthy people to make a quiz on American politics.

By: Tlaloc

Tlaloc — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:40:20 +0000

That's as good an explanation for why I'm dissatisfied with all of the presidential aspirants as any.

Yeah, you're screwed. :)

By: Dave Schuler

Dave Schuler — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:57:19 +0000

As is usual with tests of this sort, I, basically, hit the bullseye. I scored nearly in the center of both axes, just slightly to the right.

That's as good an explanation for why I'm dissatisfied with all of the presidential aspirants as any.

By: Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:55:19 +0000

“People should have a background check and obtain a license before they can buy a gun,” I answered Yes to this because it makes sense to take prudent measures to keep guns away from felons and nutcases. But I’d only support relatively painless “instant” background checks.

What about the license? Should the government have a database of weapons and who owns them, or require that citizens get approval before buying a weapon? I like how it works in Florida: background check, 3 day waiting period (unless you have a concealed carry permit -- which is MUST-ISSUE unless you're criminal, alcoholic, violent, retarded, etc), but no record of who owns which weapon is given to the government. That's actually in the state constitution, I believe. Specifically talks about how weapon lists can be used by the government for tyrannical reasons. But lumping "background check" with "licensed" does make for a muddled question, yeah.

By: independent

independent — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:00:09 +0000

bgodley:

Substance guy needs to get a whole team of personality guys running his campaign.

The internet may be valuing substance more and more, but the majority of voters are still plugged into the TV.

By: acm

acm — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:23:29 +0000

http://www.glassbooth.org

Glass Booth is the answer to the common gripe that these compass quizzes assign the same value to each issue. With GB, you start with 20 points and award as many as you like to a number of different issues, so that it's possible to tell it that you just don't care about issue X by giving it a zero.

As for accuracy...well, sorta.

By: Daniel W. Drezner

Daniel W. Drezner — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:15:20 +0000

Great, I should vote for the nutjob...

It turns out that half the country will be voting in a primary where the outcome is not preordained. This is a good thing -- but which candidate deserves your vote? We here at danieldrezner.com will not be endorsing anyone -- despite claims to the cont...

By: Grewgills

Grewgills — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:56:30 +0000

I just went over the quiz in both languages with my wife and there were really only 2 major translation issues.
Q 23 asks if illegal aliens should be given the right to citizenship in english whereas in Dutch it asks if they should be given the possibility of citizenship.
Q27 asks if the government should insure those w/o medical insurance whereas the Dutch version asks if the gov should insure they get insurance.
Both of these make a substantive difference and I would guess that the test is graded on the Dutch version.
The previous incarnation of this quiz for Dutch politics (stemwijzer) allowed you to weight the issues. This option was likely left out here due to lack of similar familiarity with the American politicians and issues.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:17:35 +0000

I think what this survey shows is that James and many others among us would fall pretty close to an unnamed, mainstream realistic libertarian. In this test, Ron Paul is pretty much placed into that category, with the exception of immigration and abortion where he is off the reservation. But the quiz doesn't capture who Ron Paul actually seems to be. If it had lots of questions about the gold standard, eliminating public schools, and some thick red meat from of the Ron Paul newsletter paranoia variety, Ron Paul would be somewhere off the chart. That leaves James, me, and many other Americans stuck looking longingly as we fall into the big empty space between Obama and McRomney (let's toss the Guiliani result along with Paul, he's just nuts) wishing that we could one day actually get some candidates that fall in the spot where the chart mistakenly puts Ron Paul: someone who is socially liberal and economically conservative. I'm open to the argument that McCain is there and just doesn't show up that way because of the necessary pandering to win the GOP nomination.

Interesting that Obama shows up as furthest to the right of the Dems on the economic axis. So if someone just as conservative on the economic line as RP but more liberal that James on social issues, this program would tell them they are closest to Obama. I guess that is the revelation that came to Andrew Sullivan.

And notice how Huckabee doesn't show up in the bottom left quad like Club for Growth says he would.

Is Fred Thompson really at the very bottom of the chart or did he just fall there after dozing off?

By: legion

legion — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:52:40 +0000

No, the failure in quizzes like this is that they only really have the politician's own public statements to work from - meaning that they assume said pol actually believes and/or would actually do the things he says. Hell, I'm surprised everyone doesn't get matched to Romney by that count...

By: Grewgills

Grewgills — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:42:56 +0000

I think this is a Dutch quiz. (Hey Bit you know those Dutch love RP.) They did more or less the same thing for the Dutch political parties before the last election here, but there were more questions and they were more specific. Translation issues could have complicated the wording.

As for issue weight the survey allows you to either opt out of a question partially with a neutral response or completely either by answering no opinion or unchecking the issue box at the end of the survey.