Electoral Compass offers candidate selection guidance

You’ve watched the debates, or at least the fun parts on the Internet. Talked it over with your spouse, other family members and coworkers. Read the news weeklies, daily papers and online political blogs. And sat through the TV coverage until your eyes crossed.

So you know who you want in the Oval Office for at least the next four years. Right?

Well, if you’re still vacillating, here’s one more way to help you decide: an online quiz from Electoral Compass.

Electoral Compass USA 2008 is a product of Kieskompas BV, an Amsterdam-based company that, according to its Web site, "develops web applications in order to make choices simpler and transparent, both to voters and consumers."

You answer around two dozen questions — a couple of them tax-related — and the Compass will plot your position, in relation to the candidate’s stances you’re most in line with, on a graph of social and economic progressivism or conservatism

No surprise to long-time readers that I tend to fall more to the left, especially on social issues and often on economic ones.

According to this quiz, Barack Obama’s my candidate. I’m not confirming or denying the accuracy of the Electoral Compass, but I will say it did correctly determine my Democratic affiliation.

In the FAQs, the quiz makers acknowledge some imprecision:

Why is my position close to a candidate’s, while substantively I should be corresponding with another candidate?    

If you are close to a candidate in the political landscape, this means that on average you are just as left-right or progressive-traditional as this candidate. Yet, this is merely an average. It is possible that your response to one issue is more progressive than the response of a candidate, while on other issues you were more traditional. On average, then you could end up on roughly the same position, while you have different opinions on the specific issues. Thus, you can be very close to a candidate, while still having substantial disagreement on specific issues. While often you will find that you agree on most issues with candidates that are close to you, it is nevertheless recommendable you analyze your agreement on the various issues by de-selecting themes you think are less or not at all important to you. Simply click on Issues and analyze your position.      

Moreover, because your position is projected in a two-dimensional graph, it is very well possible that you agree to a large extent with one candidate on the left-right axis, while you do not agree with that same candidate on the social-liberal/social-conservative axis. You have to keep in mind that the candidate the closest to you position in the political landscape does not necessarily have the same opinions as you have. This candidate is just on average the closest to your position on the two dimensions. You can obtain a clearer view of where you stand in comparison with the presidential candidates if you eliminate some issues by using the menu in the right column.

Like all unscientific, general-purpose quizzes it really doesn’t mean that much. But it was fun. I’ve taken it a couple of times over the last few weeks and it comes out essentially the same.

One interesting note on my results. The first few times I took the Electoral Compass quiz, I was furthest away from Fred Thompson. He’s now dropped out of the race.

This last time, Mike Huckabee is the candidate least likely to get my support. Not that I’m a harbinger of all things electoral, but if Huckabee bails, look out McCain!