Are you willing to consider that your perception of the President might possibly be flawed?
Economic Left/Right: -5.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.92
I don’t think I made the cut for “Centrist”.
I’m an Indian, so I won’t comment on your other questions, but since I consider myself to be centrist on economic issues and mostly liberal on social issues, I took the quiz. I thought the questions, especially on economics, were so simplistic and ill-defined as to be largely useless for capturing anybody’s views accurately. Or at least anybody who knows any economics.
Economic Left/Right: 2.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.33
I don’t think that the mathematical approach of finding the ideological endpoints of the two sides, and finding the middle between them is really the proper identification of the “center” when it comes to political issues. That doesn’t have any regard for the views of the bulk of the population, and ultimately that’s more or less what being “centrist” means.
Something more like a weighted average would be more appropriate- i.e. if a viewpoint is extreme and has very few adherents, it wouldn’t get as much weight as the one with say… 60 million adherents. Another way to look at it is to note that the “center” in the US is fairly far to the right of the “center” in most European countries. But if you were to find the middle between the ideological poles in both regions, your centers would be much more similar than they are, as the extreme points on both sides are pretty much the same, but where the bulk of the population averages out to is different.
I’ve always understood “centrist” and “moderate” to mean essentially the same thing, and that conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans are kind of two sides of the same centrist/moderate coin.
I’d consider it, but I think the problem is with this poll. I looked at where it placed Hillary only slightly left and less authoritarian of Trump, and has Sanders only a little left of center.
By American standards, Sanders is an extreme liberal. Hillary is left of center. Maybe this thing is scaled by European standards? I dunno.
Bloomberg is probably the nearest thing to a prominent centrist in American politics today - in my perception somewhat to the right on fiscal and crime-fighting policy, somewhat to the left on social/health issues. It’s a shame that we won’t have a third-party Bloomberg presidential candidacy (not that I’d necessarily vote for him).
As with a previous occasion when I took the Political Compass test, it thinks I am modestly left of center and slightly over the line into Libertarian territory (as opposed to the reality of my being a radical centrist), which underscores the limitations of the test.*
*really guys? There’s no reason to imprison criminals other than punishment or rehabilitation?
**what Euros think is of no relevance to this discussion.
A lot of the questions are just silly or simply can’t be answered (by me at least) with the choices given, so I’m unsure how you can use it to determine anything to be honest. Like this question: ‘Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races.’ I don’t believe in ‘race’, so how do I answer this? What ‘race’ am I supposed to be, and how do I judge whether it has ‘superior qualities’ (whatever that means) ‘compared to other races’ (which are?)? They don’t have ‘this is a stupid fucking question’ as a choice, so how do I answer it? And there are a lot of questions like that in the survey, at least, again, from my perspective.
FWIW, this is how I scored:
Your Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: 0.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.64
It’s a “tell”.
A genius putting together the quiz figured you’d out yourself as an Authoritarian Rightist prig by answering “yes”. I was tempted to answer “yes” to that as well as to the question on whether same-sex couples should be able to adopt, just to see if the website exploded.
Are you willing to entertain the concept that the survey might be flawed and doesn’t really say much about those taking it? Seriously, there were a lot of questions that, IMHO I couldn’t answer with Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree and Strongly Disagree and basically had to wing a bunch of the answers or answered them while rolling my eyes since there were so many caveats running through my head. Hell, even if they had a Neutral and Think Question is Stupid selections it would still be off, but not having those makes the results fairly meaningless to me anyway. I also have serious doubts that the people they are comparing us to at the end actually took the test. 
Yeah, I agree. I almost did the same thing since it was pretty obvious how you could game the test to come out with whatever results you wanted.
I think people are giving too much importance to the pol-compass thingy (I know, that’s a highly technical term :)). I’m sure that wasn’t the point of the thread. It’s just a toy, really; it might have some minor ability to predict between liberal and conservative poles, but isn’t the manual of political thought.
As has been stated, some of the questions are straight out of lalaland, and four options aren’t nearly enough to provide any kind of a nuanced view of a position on a particular issue.
That other poll, how much you agree with various candidates, is a little closer to reality in terms of its variability, but it’s still clearly not highly predictive of anything more than generalized classifications.
Why? You’ve heard of Anarchism, haven’t you?
So, here am I on the Compass:
Economic Left/Right: -3.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.62
Yet, I am strongly pragmatic in my views on how to get things done. So it doesn’t particularly encapsulate the policies I’d support. (people see the pragmatism and conclude centrism)
My results:
Your Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: -6.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.64
I didn’t like that this test had no “neutral” option. On some of the questions, I truly didn’t agree or disagree at all, but I had to pick one since there was no “I don’t give a rat’s ass” option.
Yes because the thing this country needs is a literal Wall Street man. :rolleyes: I suppose in certain ways I’m a centrist because I do hold some conservative views (on abortion, guns, and a few other issues) but in an opposite way from most people the Establishment likes to define as centrist (warmongering Wall Street shills who say nice things about gay people-ie the Joe Liebermans and Mark Kirks of the world).
Several, including me, complain that the test makes them appear too liberal. I don’t think the site’s placement of politicians is correct in terms of their questions. I scored to the left of Sanders, even though there are few, if any, issues on which I’m to his left. And many of my answers were those of a “conservative.” (Part of the problem is that you need an extra click, and extra reading, to get more nuanced options. Could it be that I, and others, appear extremist just because we were too lazy to do that?)
Whatever basis the site operators used to place the politicians, I don’t think it was this test! Someone like Hillary would never take such a test, but one of her top aides might be induced to take it on her behalf. It might be interesting to see the results of that.
I suspect that there are a fair number of Americans not averse to the concept of compromise. The GOP talks out of both sides of their mouth on this issue. On the one hand, they talk big about litmus tests and overturning President Obama’s signature accomplishment. On the other hand their base seems to unaware of Mitch McConnell’s rather explicit obstructionism to the point of filibustering his own damn bill. There is an asymetry there.
To be sure you don’t have to be centrist to accept the necessity of compromise. Heck a working knowledge of history or even reflection on the nature of democracy will persuade one of that.
Also and separately, arguably Hillary Clinton’s center-leftism is part of her appeal. She’s a transactional politician after all, something I see as honorable, useful even.
The race question doesn’t influence the Left-Right axis, it influences the authoritarian-liberal one. For that matter, I know plenty of people who would answer ‘yes’ to both the race question and the gay adoption one.
Centrism seems to be believing and supporting liberal values while denying you’re liberal
Ask any random sample of people if health care is good, and they will answer in the affirmative. Ask the same group if they like Obamacare, and the positive feelings drop. Ask that group about specific provisions of Obamacare like extending the time that kids get to be on their parents’ health insurance, or removing the cap on lifetime payments, and people will say its good. Tell them its from Obamacare and they’ll not like it as much.
Do the same thing with almost any liberal social or economic policy and people will like it in a vacuum. People like minimum wage, protection for workers, vacation and sick times, cheap daycare, equality in payment, more diversity in hiring and in schools, but frame it as an attack on business or religious freedom and suddenly people feel very differently.
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Centrism seems to be believing and supporting liberal values while denying you’re liberal
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Or, conversely, it could be that centrists deny that they are conservatives. Of course, the reality is that most centrists are just that…in the middle between hard core left wingers/liberals and right wingers/conservatives, perhaps leaning one way on some issues and the other on others.
Your argument reminds me of atheists trying to tell agnostics that they are REALLY just cowardly atheists.