I’ve been a fan of the two axis presentation of political orientation for quite some time. A favorite site of mine, On the Issues, has done a good job of tracking candidates using the measure. Now, The Political Compass, sporting a more easily digested graph, is gaining popularity. Essentially, they present a vertical social scale and a horizontal economic scale. On the Y axis, social conservatives plot to the north and freewheeling hippies settle at the southern pole. Across the x axis, you’ll find the socialists clumping up together on the left and the hands-off Laissez-faire crowd speeding towards the right. For a better description, go here or here.
I’m not surprised that the people behind On the Issues are libertarians. Back in the day, when I swam upstream from my economically liberal tendencies and called myself an Objectivist, I found it easier to communicate my political positions in terms of two axes. Objectivists/libertarians are generally socially liberal and economically conservative (to put it lightly). Nowadays, everyone seems to speak in those terms. You may have heard an increasing number of old-school conservatives referring to themselves as economically conservative, distancing themselves certain other elements in the party (like intolerance and general prudishness).
Here’s a breakdown of the 2008 presidential candidates that appeared recently in the London Times:
Click for full-size.
They pulled the graph from The Political Compass site, which argues the following regarding a perceived need to break away from the overly simplistic left-right distinction:
On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It’s not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can’t explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as ‘right-wingers’, yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.
Here’s a comparison from The Political Compass that places some historical figures on the map:
Click for full-size.
Using their test, where do you fall? Here’s where I’m at: ec=-7.50&soc=-7.33 And, using the test from On the Issues, I rank as ec 92% / soc 0%
where I fall on The Political Compass
where I stand On the Issues
I may appear to be rather far to the south-west or left-corner. However, I think it’s more so the case that the candidates shown way up above are drastically out of touch with where America is at. This article backs me up (bearing in mind that it’s from Kucinich’s site): Survey of public attitudes makes Kucinich the frontrunner
Political Compass test
2008 Candidate match from On the Issues
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