Okay, so it’s been a week and you’re jonesing for your political fix. Of course, there are certain exceptions – many people are getting theirs from last week’s results that still haven’t been resolved. Nonetheless, so that you can be practiced for the next time around, whenever it may happen, here are some political sites to entertain you.
Most people in our country like to affiliate themselves with one political party. The problem I have with this is that they all stink. In my opinion, there is remarkably little difference between the major parties, and the minor parties really don’t inspire confidence – even those with which I might otherwise agree. So what do you do? I suppose the best bet is to examine the positions of the various parties. This site is brought to us by the Libertarian Party, so you’ll find a bit of a slant to the questions – but they are fairly thorough in their coverage.
If you’re more of a visual person, take the Enhanced-Precision Politcal Quiz to see where you place on a graph. If you’ve taken it before and don’t mind, take it again. I’ve got a referrer code in there so I can periodically get results of the quiz. I’m curious to see the leanings of my readership. Another word of warning: This is brought to us by the Libertarian Party, or at least by someone who supports the Libertarian Party, so things are again a bit slanted. View my results if you like.
For something similar, but a little less biased (at least from what I can tell), try the Political Compass instead. This one is a little more in-depth, but perhaps gives a more accurate view. For me, it shows a slightly different result than the first test. I am apparently marginally inclined toward the Libertarian and right viewpoints, much less extreme than in the first test.
For an alternative to these options, that doesn’t (appear to) do anything with your data, try the Political Quiz Show. This one’s fairly quick and appears to be done entirely in javascript – so there should be no worries about anyone tracking your results or anything. I scored a 27 on this one, which puts me slightly more conservative than the elder George Bush and a bit less conservative than Jack Kemp (the higher the score, the more conservative).
If you don’t have the time, and just want answers, try the World’s Smallest Political Quiz. At only 8 questions, it shouldn’t take long at all to complete, though I found that because of the limited number of questions, it may not be quite right. The more detailed quizzes appear to more accurately reflect things rather than the somewhat stark questions presented here.
With all that, which is the best? Probably none of them. Your political affiliation shouldn’t boil down to a quiz, regardless of whether that quiz has 8 questions or 8 thousand questions. The world we live in encourages people to buttonhole themselves into particular political labels, and that’s probably the worst thing that you could do. Study the issues, find out what you believe, and vote accordingly. If it doesn’t fit squarely into the round hole of our two-party system, so be it.