Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

The biggest problem that I have with the quiz is its complete disdain for interrelationship among issues. For example, consider the question on whether those who have higher incomes should get less medicare, which is lumped in among the “income” questions, in the context of a position that health care should not under any circumstances be related to purported ability to pay. The quiz treats an answer that higher incomes should lead to less medicare as “economically liberal"… but it is only economically liberal if it is a truly independent variable, and it is not.

Well, a mismatch between the compass and your expectations is easy to explain.

It’s constructed by non-Americans…
It is funny to see you Americans visiting a Dutch site with adds from the Netherlands…

And it’s kind of sad that we have so much interest (and stakes) in the outcome of your political process that it even pays off to construct interactive ‘voter-guides’ (there is in fact another one… http://www.eenvandaag.nl/stemwijzerusa/en/).

The sad part is of course that we have no way of influencing the process (logically, but unfortunate for us). So, when you vote, think of the rest of the world as well..

Untill then, I’ll keep my fellow Dutch countrymen posted on your elections via my blog…

Right.  But which Romney?  The 1996 Romney?  The 2002 Romney?  The 2008 Romney?

Perhaps a Romney yet to be determined???

I think a lot of those questions were flawed for a lot of reasons.  Asking “does the death penalty help to deter crime?” is not the same as asking “do you support capital punishment?” There also isn’t much room in that poll for federalist positions.  There’s no way to express that you think states should be able to st drug or abortion policy.

Over all, I think it’s easy to use, and has a very nice design, but the actual questions used could do with some improvement.  Also, it would be nice to be able to say how important issues are to you like most of the other candidate matching sites, especially with their slick “compass” display.

I had that problem with the quiz as well. I don’t consider the death penalty a deterrent, but I also don’t see that as one of the main reasons to be for it. In fact a large percentage of Americans who support the death-penalty do not deem it a deterrent. I’m not even sure life imprisonment or any imprisonment is much of a deterrent, but that doesn’t mean I favor letting every convict free.

Although I guess it might also depend on what we mean by “deterrent.” I support the death penalty in the rare cases a person is a continuing threat to others or when his/her living is otherwise a threat to society. So I do support it to deter people like some Gang leaders who have had people killed from their jail cell or serial-killers who have a compulsion to kill others even in prison. There are also a few cases where I support it because it’s better to have the state investigate if it’s just than have an unruly mob do it on vengeance.

Anyway I got Ron Paul, which makes me think it’s just absurd. I do not believe in most anything I’ve heard him say. I believe in humanitarian intervention (sometimes), international organizations, the Federal Reserve, the Union in the US Civil War, and other things.

Jared, well put.  Very few of these quizzes let you give a nuanced response to this stuff.  Yes, the death penalty probably deters crime.  I’m nevertheless (largely) opposed to it, even if the cost of that opposition is that we don’t optimally deter crime.

I had the exact same experience as the Prof. Pencil landed next to Romney - but strongly supporting Thompson. First national politician I have ever donated to.