What's Your Political Typology?
Mollie Hemingway, Ed. ·
May 5, 2011 at 6:18am
I tend to dislike those quizzes where you're forced to choose between two options, neither of which are quite right. But this Pew survey claims it will identify your political typology.
Why don't you head on over and report back on your results. For what it's worth, I came back as a "libertarian," and they say 9 percent of the population shares that typology.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
"Staunch Conservative"
"along with 9% of the public"
May '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
I'm with you Mollie -- Libertarian, But trying hard to understand how you could answer those questions which were so polarizing and come up as "disaffected" or "bystander?"
Jul '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
Also:
"Nearly half believe President Obama born outside the United States"
Funny.
Jul '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
I think "bystanders" wouldn't take the test.
Jan '11
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
I'm also a libertarian according to the quiz, though I tend to self-identify as an independent conservative who almost always votes Republican. I'm with you on disliking such quizzes. The immigration questions were particularly bad, as they don't distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.
Apr '11
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
Staunch conservative.
I would have liked a Leikert (hope I spelled it right) scale better: giving me a statement and having me agree with it to a greater (5) degree or lesser degree (1) would have given them a more valid measure of my positions, and allowed for a more continuous spectrum of results.
Edited on May 22, 2011 at 11:23amJun '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
Staunch Conservative -- just like, er, Jimmy Carter above.
May '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
Who designed that thing? It reads like a high school science project.
The choices are polarized to the extent that it's "I like long walks on the beach and poetry" vs "I enjoy mowing down illegal aliens with AK-47 on weekends."
Edited on May 5, 2011 at 6:42amMay '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
Libertarian. This was less clichéd than some other tests, particularly that "World's Shortest Political Quiz" that is used to push-identify Libertarians. That one assumed that social conservatives want to use the coercive power of the state to achieve their ends. A libertarian can still be a social conservative - what consenting adults wish to do that harms no-one else may be no business of the law, but I don't have to be forced to pay for it, or approve of it.
Jun '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
But i also found that if I answer the questions all the same way, but indicate at the end that i am a "strong democrat" I come out as a "hard-pressed democrat" along with 13% of the population.
so, does that mean that 13% of the democrat population are racist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic warmongers? Or just Republicans?
Aug '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
EJHill: Who designed that thing? It reads like a high school science project.
The choices are polarized to the extent that it's "I like long walks on the beach and poetry" vs "I enjoy mowing down illegal aliens with AK-47 on weekends." · May 5 at 6:41am
Edited on May 05 at 06:42 am
It's simplistic and will be somewhat inaccurate. But it will help some people clarify their thinking.
Mar '11
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
I found some of the questions to be irrelevant or incomplete. Immigration? Is that legal or illegal immigration? big difference. Satisfied or not satisfied with my financial condition has very little to do with Washington. Sure maybe lib policies keep the investment in jobs down but left or right ideology does not control how much effort I put into my career or how easy I can pay my bills. For me the religion questions are meaningless; one could be a practicing churchgoer and be politically liberal. Environment- who is not for clean air and water? it doesn't say good eco-laws; some should be strict, some should be canned. Same deal with government benefits for the poor, it is not a yes or no question. More like a who and why question. Too picky? ok, they can't be that nuanced but many of the questions seemed to me to have nothing to do with political 'typology'
Nov '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
Staunch Conservative -- although I would consider myself as merely an observer as I do engage in the political process in anyway including not voting.
Dec '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
Staunch Conservative -- but I do have to wonder if the only difference between Staunch Conservative and libertarian on this test is your answer to the religion question.
Edited on May 5, 2011 at 7:13amJun '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
Staunch conservative—although I consider myself libertarian. I agree that the religion question was probably the difference. 9% of the population, huh?
Mar '11
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
I'm a "staunch conservative" and my hands and feet are usually warm enough.
Aug '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
I've discovered that you a) don't have to answer every question and b) you can answer very few of the questions and still squeak by with the label "libertarian".
To my mind, too many of the questions created a false dichotomy, so I simply didn't answer those.
For example, poor people don't "have it easy" -- who would choose to be born poor? -- but that doesn't mean "the government should do more": a large part of the reason poverty is so miserable is the cult of dependency. So I didn't answer.
Ditto for questions like whether businesses make "too much" or "a fair amount" of profit. It's none of my business to judge whether a business profit is "fair" -- although those businesses in bed with the government (because of bailouts or other reasons) are arguably making "too much" "profit". So this question is ambiguous. Skip.
As for the questions about personal finances, if I don't answer or say they're OK (they could be far worse), I'm libertarian. If I complain (which I could), I'm disaffected.
Interesting.
Dec '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
I was too irritated by the first question to take it. As others stated above, it depends on whether the immigrants are legal or illegal.
Don't you think this sort of thing just plays right into the narrative liberals have told about conservatives? As Prager has named it, SIXHIRB: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted?
PEW can't type conservatives, because PEW doesn't know conservatives. I'm not playing their game.
Jan '11
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
I take it you meant that you do not engage in the political process in any way. But you're a paying member of a site dedicated to conversation about politics, the culture, etc.? What does not voting do for you? As I tell my non-voting friends, if you don't vote, I don't want to hear you complaining when the government does something you don't like.
Aug '10
Re: What's Your Political Typology?
I don't find "The World's Smallest Political Quiz" (TWSPQ) clichéd, though I agree it steers people libertarian (but maybe it should).
TWSPQ doesn't imply that all socially-conservative people want to use coercion to achieve their ends: it does show -- quite fairly to my mind -- that if you do want to use the coercive power of the state to achieve socially-conservative ends, you are not libertarian.
As you point out, a libertarian can still be socially conservative (apparently we're both both). That's excellent. It's also helpful for a social conservative to identify his libertarian leanings:
Social conservatives must decide how they want to see social conservatism achieved -- so they don't get "misled" by politicians who are conservative socially, but too into Big Government.
TWSPQ is imperfect, but to my mind the best-designed political quiz so far. Its "component analysis" structure is a stroke of genius.