The Political Compass sweet spot

[cthulu2016]

There are zillions of political compass representations of leaders, past and present. In the US or Europe sucessful leaders are almost invariably bunched together in the autoritarian-right quadrant. Even the fringe elements of what we consider to be the entirety of the practical political landscape are more or less in line with the broad concensus.

Is this a defect in the political compass method or does it represent something real?




www.politicalcompass.org/

[Odin2005]

1. I would like an answer, too.

[hootinholler]

2. An interesting question

I doubt an accurate answer can be had without knowing a large enough sample of average folk.

Some of the greatest leaders were in the lower left quadrant. Gandhi is one who comes to mind. I'm not sure where MLK and JFK were, I suspect JFK would be upper right.

[limpyhobbler]

3. Somewhat real.

The mainstream US political spectrum is very narrow when you compare it to the whole world. And not only the whole world but also back in time. So there is some truth in the little red and blue clusters for Dems and GOPs.






But I also think this compass has a couple blind spots.
It doesn't do a good job distinguishing between mixed economy social democrats vs. the proponents of private profit.
As you can see here where they have UK Labour just a couple squares from Adolf Hitler and the BNP:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010

Any political compass is going to be flawed because you can't quantify some peoples beliefs so easily (Ron Paul for example).
Some people are just harder to fit in a neat box.

[jody]

4. Source might be questionable but IMO the corporate party finances Dem & Rep candidates

to keep voters fighting over divisive, polarizing issues while they pass laws with bipartisan support that tighten their stranglehold on our government. I'm not surprised that Obama and the other blue dots are in the same quadrant with Gingrich and the other red dots.

[Duer 157099]

5. I've taken that test many times over the years and

consistently end up in the lower lower left left quadrant.

I've always wondered why so many are elsewhere.

[cthulu2016]

6. One area of the chart is actually impossible

No political system could be in the very lower left corner because a certain level of authority is required to enforce ultimate economic leftism. Human beings will strive to have more and, whatever the legal status of property, will not always give up what they aquire.

That said, I am proud to consider myself somewhere in the left-libertarian quadrant.

[treestar]

7. Crazy freezers would not put Mitt so high in the right hand top corner

Though the Obama/Biden/Edwards/Clinton cluster - why don't they get to be farther down? What standards are they using for a social libertarian? All are pro-choice, for instance.

[TheKentuckian]

9. That is all they have to hang their hats on and that might be limited to those who can self pay

for some.

Between mediocre and dicey on most rights, and none too slow to error on the side of the state.

[MFrohike]

8. Better question

How are those leaders being judged, on performance or rhetoric? And who is evaluating those criteria?

This does go to method, but it's more explicit in asking the question.

[moriah]

10. A relatively conservative coworker took the test and came in dead center.

He's a Christian, conservative, very pro-life, etc.

All of the liberals in my office came up far left and social libertarian of Dennis Kuchnich.

I think there's a slight bias as far as where the center point is, but it is a good comparative tool between friends, maybe not politicians.

[Telly Savalas]

11. Political compasses are fucking stupid

The notion that one can meaningfully distill a person's political philosophy into 2 numbers is just dumb.

And even if there was any value in such oversimplification, the execution of this idea is completely arbitrary: depending on the issues/questions selected and the scoring/weighting of these issues, one can make the compass say anything they want. Just because I can put some random shit in Excel doesn't make Barack Obama a right wing fascist or Michele Bachmann a socialist.