Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
Claire Berlinski, Ed. ·
November 27, 2011 at 9:09am
Okay, Tim, I took the bait and I took the quiz. I've got some questions for you.
1) A moderate is 35? What on earth is wrong with people? I scored 13.5, and I didn't vote on a strict partisan basis at all.
2) Apparently, my PQ is in the ballpark of Richard Nixon. But how would you calculate Nixon's PQ? I took the long-form test, and I can't imagine Nixon would have recognized numbers like that or had much clue what the questions meant. So what does that mean, exactly?
3) What's up with asking the same question twice? Is it just to measure whether people are answering at random and discount the answer appropriately if they are?
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Dec '10
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
Mine was 3, so you kinda are a moderate. Heh.
He asks questions about similar pieces of legislation because one originates in the Senate, and one originates in the House.
I didn't see any actual repeats in the 40 question version, but there were many instances where he asked about the House bill and then later about the Senate bill (or vice versa).
As for Nixon, I believe if you go back and read his first post here, he detailed how he went about assigning PQ's to people who are long dead. IIRC, it mostly centers around picking out hard yes/no stands on particular issues and then equating those ratios to people who are still alive in order to get a decent estimate of the the deceased's PQ.
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
It seems to me that the way that quiz is structured, anyone who's uneasy about the government running up a debt unprecedented in the history of human endeavor can't possibly score higher than 20.
Oct '10
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
My PQ is also 13.5
Apr '11
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
I thought I was pretty far to the conservative/libertarian side, but apparently I'm a squish: I scored 18.3.
I don't fully understand that, since I'd be for a federal budget of 1.2 trillion, with 800+ billion going to the military.
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
Soul mate!
Oct '10
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Soul mate! · Nov 27 at 4:33am
And I consider myself a RINO moderate. Okay, maybe on social issues.
Jun '10
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
I scored a 5.4.
May '10
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
5.3, which puts me in Perry territory, and yet I'm leaning Romney first (and Gingrich second) on pragmatic grounds -- evidence, I think, that one can, like Coulter, prefer a moderate candidate here and there without being a moderate oneself.
One weakness of the quiz is that its reliance on congressional votes necessarily excludes most foreign policy issues.
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
Well, remember that the votes were taken in 2009. I think that, at the time, people might have been more willing to run deficits. I remember thinking in Dec. 08 / Jan. 09 that we might be facing something as bad as the Great Depression. Lindsay Graham is about a 15 on the scale. Maybe a more appropriate way to define moderate is 15-85, or perhaps 20-80.
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
CoolHand: Mine was 3, so you kinda are a moderate. Heh.
He asks questions about similar pieces of legislation because one originates in the Senate, and one originates in the House.
I didn't see any actual repeats in the 40 question version, but there were many instances where he asked about the House bill and then later about the Senate bill (or vice versa).
As for Nixon, I believe if you go back and read his first post here, he detailed how he went about assigning PQ's to people who are long dead. IIRC, it mostly centers around picking out hard yes/no stands on particular issues and then equating those ratios to people who are still alive in order to get a decent estimate of the the deceased's PQ. · Nov 27 at 1:44am
Excellent points. All the questions are based on roll call votes in Congress. Thus, Nixon's score comes only from his service in the House and Senate. None comes from his presidency.
I let the Americans for Democratic Action (a liberal group) pick the questions for me. Yes, in 2009 sometimes they picked the same issue twice - once for each house.
Mar '11
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
I'm a perfect 10! Does that mean I'm the political equivalent of Bo Derek, ca. 1980?
Mar '11
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
I'm a 3 (Nixon's The One!), confirming my reputation as a curmudgeon. As an aside, I'd prefer the questions not include the party breakdown on the vote. It's a not so subtle "whipping" of the answers toward one party or another. Make it a clean question and let the person taking the test decide on the merits of the issue, without the cribbing of a party vote.
Edited on November 27, 2011 at 4:13pmJan '11
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
Three! The drug re-importation issue is tricky. Ultimately I voted to not allow it because I had been influenced by Milton Friedman. And as far as confirming Justice Sotomayor: elections have consequences as much as I detest the outcome. Borking just isn't right.
Mar '11
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
I scored a 0.6 - along with Michele Bachman and Jim Demint. I'm disappointed - how did I score so high? I was aiming for a perfect 0.0.
Edit - I think the 0.6 was due to my shoddy typing, since corrected.
Edited on November 27, 2011 at 4:07pmMar '11
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
Actually, drug reimportation is simple. If you allow imporation of Canadian pharmaceuticals, you're also importing Canadian price controls. Price controls never work. Regarding Sotomayor, the consequence of the election is that Obama got the right to nominate her; the Senate still has the "advise and consent" requirement.
Mar '11
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
I was slightly higher than you, Claire, but still under 20.
I think that Prof. Grossclose's method has merit--my only criticism of the user test (as opposed to the overall method) is that it was limited to one session of Congress and was a bit skewed (because of the big issues and votes in that Congress) to domestic policy issues (which is a useful leading indicator, but not the whole picture).
Sep '10
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
I took the ten-point quiz and came out a 25. I'm no methodologist, but it strikes me that being a moderate mostly means not being able to decide. Not sure if that's good or bad.
Edited on November 27, 2011 at 5:43pmApr '11
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
Yeah, I knew that would inflate my score, but I had to vote for her on the same basis as you. A couple other questions I had to take a pass because it didn't seem like there was enough information. But if I had QuickerBrownFox on the staff, I could have made an informed decision.
Apr '11
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
My score was 3, and my first thought was "Where did I go wrong?". Or to put it another way, How does one score 0?
I chose based on hindsight. At the time, I didn't object to TARP; I figured there was some justice in it, since the housing bubble and bust were completely the government's doing. There was no market in MBSs, but the Treasury could hold the toxic assets with less harm than private banks. (Of course, a lot of the strain could have been relieved by rescinding the ex post facto mark-to-market rule.) The MBSs were still paying interest, and eventually it would be possible to determine their yields and hence what their prices were.
I posted my score on Facebook, with a comment that Prof. G. and his colleagues have determined that absent media bias, the country would vote more like red Texas than like purplish Iowa.
Gotta get the word out.
Dec '10
Re: Questions for Tim Groseclose About My PQ
skipsul: I scored a 0.6 - along with Michele Bachman and Jim Demint. I'm disappointed - how did I score so high? I was aiming for a perfect 0.0.
Edit - I think the 0.6 was due to my shoddy typing, since corrected. · Nov 27 at 7:05am
Edited on Nov 27 at 07:07 am
Same here. We are the 0.6%. #OccupyTim'swebsite.