The Democratic "Left"

'Political Compass' is a libertarian tool and it has been debunked repeatedly on various blogs over the past several years. I was just one of many to do so, far from being the best and clearest.

I'm Tony P on the plot. I'm in the lower left quadrant too.

Bora,

I spent enough time (nearly 20 years now) analyzing multivariate data to know that bivariable plots are, by their nature, simplistic. However, my experience with having students take the Political Compass are sufficiently accurate to make some generalizations and it's a little much to dismiss it as a "libertarian tool"!

Point still holds: None of the candidates are as far left as I am and the major Democratic candidates (including your favorite Edwards) are uncomfortably similar to Republicans.

I have to say I think that the contrast space is question begging and prejudicial, but the results may still be useful. It certainly goes to show what I have said for years - the US simply doesn't have an effective left, or any other kind of alternative to authoritarian right-wing economics, in its political space.

I think it is fair to say that humans are two complex to be plotted on two dimensions and have it convey a lot of information. Plus, I score to the left of Kucinich, but I doubt I am really more progressive than him.

From my standpoint, the value in this is to get people thinking about specific issues. This might be a way to get away from the popularity-contest mentality of most elections.

Wilkins,

Agreed. American politics is, for all intents and purposes, shades of gray and nothing like the diversity in Europe (for example) where there is more to the left *and* right. (The former gives me joy, the later scares me!)

Such graphs need to be calibrated by placing people like Attila the Hun, etc. on them. How else are you to know if you are to the right or left of Attila the Hun?

As a confirmed lefty I've known for a long time that the right has managed to shift the center of American politics pretty far right. It's depressing.

I'm sort of interested in what libertarians are alleged to be doing with this tool, though. It seems sort of pointless, unless it's for reinforcing their notion of themselves as rugged loners.

This may not apply to Bora's criticism (which seems to amount to little more than "it's not perfect so it's useless"), but the most common objection to the compass here is from people who don't understand it and don't realise which questions are economic and which are social. Of course, a third axis, such as "nationalism" could improve it more and no doubt others would give even more accurate results, until you have twenty different axis or so.
It is curious that apart from Paul, the candidates do all lie on pretty much a 45degree line - economic control seems to go hand in hand with social control, but in my experience, non politicians have a much greater spread and are much less likely to fall on this line.

I have no idea how they assessed what a lot of the candidates positions are (I wonder the same thing about the historical figures they list on the site). A lot of the questions are about attitudes which wouldn't easily be deduced from particular policy stances.

More importantly, it is clear that the Democratic front runners (Obama, Edwards and Clinton) are clearly not really on the Left at all, either economically or socially.

All that's clear is that they're not to the left of some arbitrary line you or politicalcompass.org have chosen to draw - these candidates clearly are to the left of the centre in American politics, which is what should be important here, as there is no objective scale. Furthermore, by looking at this chart for EU countries, one can see that even countries like Sweden are to the right according to politicalcompass.org, implying that their left-right scale isn't very balanced - at least not from the perspective of the developed world (it is quite possible that the developing nations enjoy a greater socialist influence).

As for the greater European diversity, I think it's exaggerated. Different countries have different partly overlapping subsets of the political spectrum included in their mainstreams, and while an American socialist will look longingly at some European country's political diversity, a Swedish conservative might feel the same way about America. That said, I do believe that a multi-party system tends to produce more political diversity than a two-party system.

Bora, I am amused to learn that the political compass, a Libertarian tool, does not recognize Ron Paul, another Libertarian tool, as a Libertarian ...

It seems to me that the main problem with this political compass is that, with the exceptions of 2 people, everyone is in the top right quadrant.

Now if you were to look at that quadrant only (and ignore the authoritarian/right label), I'd agree that the general pattern and placement looks correct to my personal opinion of where these politicians stand on the political spectrum.

"It seems to me that the main problem with this political compass is that, with the exceptions of 2 people, everyone is in the top right quadrant."

I believe that the scales are normalized to international politics (or maybe politicians from democracies). So if you look at a plot of politicians from all over the world they are spread out over most of it. The US political center is simply way off in the upper right quadrant compared with the rest of the world.

Hum, European politics are said to be more diverse and particularly extended with regard to the left spectrum, but here is what the political compass show about Eu-govs:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/euchart

Seems like we are globally less authoritarian, but I really have had a contrary impression while living here (though it might better be explained as a collective indiference in USA vs a more socially/societal commitment in EU).

I've always suspected something wrong with the political compass calculations.

But note that the chart you link to is one of the governments currently in power. If you look at, for example, the chart of Irish political parties, you see more diversity than represented by the US parties.

Sure, there's absolutely no doubt that Europe has a politician spectrum much more anchored into the left. I don't know much about other countries, though I suspect there is a general trend that left parties actually govern much righter than they announce before elections. We have special qualification for this in France. Let's not forget about this very curious aspect... There is always a gap between what you like you think you are and what you actually are.