Political leanings quiz

[IBBoard]

I don't know how many people will want to take this (although I can guess where TGSC might come out on it) but I just found out about http://www.PoliticalCompass.org.

Basically it's a series of questions (six pages) that finds where you lie in normal political left-right (economic) and the 'up-down' of the social aspect (authoritarian or libertarian).

As with most of these tests then there's some questions where you think "well I disagree with that, but I don't exactly agree with the exact inverse, so what is it going to do to my results?" but my final ratings were:

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -3.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.44

[edit] Just re-took it to see how it affected things (still trying to be truthful) and came out with:

Economic Left/Right: -4.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.33

So obviously my Libertarian value is about correct, but my classic left-right rating is a bit undecided depending on how I think about the questions.

[Hivooh]

My final ratings:

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: 0.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.46

[stfas]

umm does that mean you suck at political leanings?

[IBBoard]

No, it means I'm left-wing libertarian and that Hivooh is marginally right-wing and marginally libertarian.

You can't exactly "suck" at having a political leaning

[stfas]

umm i dont know what the heck you're on about

[IBBoard]

Left and right wing are classic political poles. Wikipedia gives the best brief description (with least bias):

The underlying principle of the Political Compass is that political views may be better measured along two separate and independent axes. The Economic (Left-Right) axis measures one's opinion of how the economy should be run: "The Left" is defined as the view that the economy should be run by a cooperative collective agency (which can mean the state, but can also mean a network of communes), while "the Right" is defined as the view that the economy should be left to the devices of competing individuals and organisations. The other axis (Authoritarian-Libertarian) measures one's political opinions in a "Social" sense, regarding a view of the appropriate amount of "personal freedom": "Libertarianism" is defined as the belief that personal freedom should be maximised, while "Authoritarianism" is defined as the belief that authority and tradition should be obeyed.

As an example, someone who believes politics should be like the "American Dream" of being able to make your millions is more right-wing because it also has the counter-side of "and you're free to fail miserably and not get a single bit of support from anyone". Someone who believes the people should have personal freedom and not have a nanny state is Libertarian. You can combine the two to get a right-wing libertarian.

Wikipedia has (of course) lots of pages starting with the Left-Right politics and the Political Compass. If you know your world leaders then the Political Compass Analysis has some useful information as well.

I'm sure you'll get to politics a bit more as you get older.