Electoral Compass
January 16th, 2008 Richard Posted in politics, web and new media | 7 Comments »
I learned of this electoral compass site via twitter with a post from my friend Charles Hope, a very bright guy, who is a co-founder of blip.tv.
It doesn’t take long to answer the questions and I turned out to be awfully strong in social liberalism and economically left. Below is a screen shot of my profile, also showing candidates. (Ok, actually I added the picture and my name – the site just shows the pencil.) I was closest to Barack Obama, though I was disappointed to see the site did not even include Dennis Kucinich, and my guess is that I would be closer to his views.
In any case, this is not a political blog, except as it relates to web issues, and, lord knows, I could not survive in the Ozarks at a technological university if I didn’t appreciate and get along with conservatives. However, I’m not secret about my views (this is America, damn it 
and mainly I thought the site was very well designed, functionally intuitive, and appears to do a good job of summarizing candidates views relative to mine.
Of course, the big question is, who created this site, and how much do I trust them to represent my views or the candidates? With a little effort (clicking on an obscure disclaimer button at the bottom of the page) I found that site isn’t even a US site, but is the work of a company called Kieskompas BV, located in the Netherlands. Further, they say that the data may be used for “scientific research” and may be published in “the media”, though I doubt seriously that this will involve any peer review, the cornerstone of academic scholarship and, of course, there is the other big question as to who they will sell these data too. Anyway, I thought it was a cool tool, though, of course, you must take these things with a grain of salt.
January 16th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Nice. The interface was very easy to use. I especially liked the “stepped” progress bar as you answered each question. The overall layout and color scheme is excellent. (those crazy graphic designers!) Without much instruction, it was easy to figure out what to do quickly.
I, too, ended up in the Social Liberalism-Progressive and Economic Left portion of the results. Not quite as high in the upper-left corner.
Hell, the United States isn’t even recognizing Kucinich, why should the Netherlands?
I voted for him in the primaries 4 years ago.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Wow, i’m closest to Ron Paul. Hmmmm. Close to center on Social Liberalism and Economic Right. Hmmm. Does that mean I need to see a therapist?
Oh well, the site was easy to use. I like this concept and wish someone in the US would create such a tool (would go great with Yahoo’s election coverage site).
January 21st, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Well I am closest to Rudy; social conservative-traditional, economic right. I thought the questions were well thought out; a little predictable. Interesting that a foreign developer would be interested in providing this sort of coverage abroad. I wonder what sort of ties exist that would create this sort of interest. Hard to tell if there was any bias in the questions posed; they seemed fairly straigtforward without any slant to them.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:28 am
MSNBC has a great tool, also:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21116732
Takes a little time to do the whole thing but it gives you a nice graphical representation of who aligns best with your views and on what issues.
@Shannon: As long as you don’t start Ron-Paul-Spamming the comments you’ll be fine without therapy.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I found I was closest to Hillary Clinton but I know that I could never vote her into office. I believe she is not capable of running this country. Even if she was the democratic candidate I would consider someone else. Hillary seems fake. I found this very interesting but how about a libertarian candidate so we can get rid of the democrats and republicans?
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Ron Paul is basically a Libertarian and he can’t get taken seriously for some reason by the media and his fellow candidates (some of those debates were just brutal and ridiculous) – so I’m not sure a 3rd party candidate could be successful, but you make a good point; Dr. Paul’s massive online presence and grassroots movement point in the direction of the web bringing power to what would normally be an ‘underdog’. I don’t think we’re there yet but this could be the start of finally killing the two party system and giving people actual choices.
February 7th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Hi Richard,
This is great. Love it.
–Steve