The Political Compass Revisited

Remember the Political Compass exercise I mentioned a couple of weeks back? Well now they’ve launched the Political Survey. It’s a comparable exercise, measuring on two different scales, but this time the scales are “left/right” (combining the social and economic issues that formed the two axes of the Compass exercise) and “pragmatic/idealistic” (a more nebulously defined scale of more “utilitarian” concerns).This time around, I scored a –6.6084 on the left/right scale (relatively far to the left), and a +1.4980 on the pragmatic/idealistic one (slightly toward the pragmatic side).

Now, in retrospect (and after having read some rather well-worded discussion on the topic at the site that first called my attention to this exercise), some of the wording does seem a little skewed to produce a left-leaning result. Still, I think the overall exercise serves the same worthwhile purpose as the Compass: Inducing people to disassociate fundamentally different elements of the traditional left/right spectrum.

Give it a try, and let me know what you think.