Vote Compass

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

That's not where I'd place the parties. I mean, sure the Cons don't believe in stimulus, but they spend more than Libs.

[Frequitude]

Agreed. The fundamental flaw in this whole thing is where they place the Conservatives on the spectrum. No way they're that much further from center than the Liberals.

Rigged!

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

Agreed. The fundamental flaw in this whole thing is where they place the Conservatives on the spectrum. No way they're that much further from center than the Liberals.

Rigged!

Well without a well defined scale, it's impossible to say where the center is. That said, if you were to distill the chart to a single axis that included economic and social policy the Liberals would be right on the center if defined so that the median voter is the center. The median Liberal voter is left of center, but if you made them a shape instead of a point, they'd be over the middle. So yes, the Conservatives are further from center.

Based on last election, removing the parties with >1% (simply so I don't have to place them) and on a scale of 0% right (100% left) to 100% right (0% left), the spectrum looks like this:

0-35% = Green, NDP, BQ
35-62% = Lib
62-100% = Con

50% is the center, and until the Cons win 50% of the popular vote, it belongs to the Libs.

I also think, on an economic policy scale (based on spending levels), the Liberals should be closer to the Conservatives than to the NDP, perhaps even to the right of the Conservatives. Not believing in Keynesian stimulus is an extreme right position though, so it's all subjective.

[J pold]

And this is why I don't feel fully represented by any political party in Canada.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

Agreed. The fundamental flaw in this whole thing is where they place the Conservatives on the spectrum. No way they're that much further from center than the Liberals.

Rigged!

Its not rigged though; you just think that you're in the middle and vote CPC. I don't mean that as a way to take a shot at you at all; its a fundamental piece of human psychology that everyone seems that they are centrist and that its "the other guys" who are off center in some way.

[Resolute 14]

Neutrality of this compass is questioned:

http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/...-babblers-have


Edit: that being said "You are closest to the Conservative Party, and furthest from the New Democrats."

Thank god I had a website handy to tell me that!

The "Your picks for Prime Minister" pane is a joke though. For the questions relating to whether each leader should be PM, I gave May, Duceppe and Layton 0s, yet they set Duceppe right behind Harper for my pick as PM because I think Duceppe is competent relative to his mandate. Those are not related concepts, however.

[TylerSVT]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Neutrality of this compass is questioned:

http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/...-babblers-have

Yea, when i read the questions i got the feeling that a lot of them were very badly written. Whoever wrote them needs to take a research methods class.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Neutrality of this compass is questioned:

http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/...-babblers-have

A lot of these people questioning the compass seem like sour grapes for me, or seem like they are more upset that they already plan to vote for party "A" and party "B" was selected based on the answers they gave.

I watched a CBC story about this project and it seems pretty interesting. It was put together by a group of Toronto Masters students (IIRC) and they modeled it after a similar thing in the Netherlands.

I didn't find the questions too misleading, but I guess I wasn't looking for tricks. I was more just trying to answer honestly. If I got a party that I otherwise wouldn't consider then I would've either (A) re-examined my position or (B) used the tools at the end of the survey to filter out the issues that I care about, etc.

Good on CBC for putting this out though. Its had a lot of users and seems to be fairly neutral as far as I can tell.

[Cowboy89]

http://www.calgarysun.com/news/decis.../17799041.html

Apparently flawed to default to the Liberal party!

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

http://www.calgarysun.com/news/decis.../17799041.html

Apparently flawed to default to the Liberal party!

The "test" the person in the article used is completely stupid.

Brock said the first time she completed the survey she selected the “somewhat agree” response to every question. The second time, she selected “somewhat disagree,” and the third time “strongly agree.”

The final questions in the survey pertain to leaders, asking respondents to rank candidates for prime minister based on trustworthiness and competence. Brock said she selected the “I don’t know” option for all the leader questions, every time.

“Every time, it told me I was politically centred and should vote Liberal,” Brock said.


Applying Brock’s method in a fourth attempt, selecting “strongly disagree” for each response, QMI Agency received the same result.

If you pick the same answer for every question, no matter what that answer is, it will place you in the center, where the Liberals are, because the questions ask your level of support for both left wing and right wing positions!


Not saying it isn't flawed, but the "logic" here is awful.

[Sainters7]

^^^
I have to agree. They have the Conservatives waaay over to the right. No way there's THAT big of a gap between them and the rest of our country's parties. That and I know I'm somewhat of a right-leaning centrist, but it said I'm a Liberal and am furthest from the Conservatives, despite the fact that I know most of my answers were from a Conservative perspective. This whole thing just seems fishy.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by SebC

The "test" the person in the article used is completely stupid.

If you pick the same answer for every question, no matter what that answer is, it will place you in the center, where the Liberals are, because the questions ask your level of support for both left wing and right wing positions!


Not saying it isn't flawed, but the "logic" here is awful.

Vote Compass itself is circular logic. It points out the logical fallicy that that theoretically someone who "Strongly agrees" with every question ends up in the same party tent as someone who 'Strongly Disagrees' with those same questions. Does not compute.

[peter12]

The calls of "flawed, flawed!" are somewhat ridiculous to me as this is clearly the front for the UofT, the university advertised in the bottom right of the survey, to obtain more data. It may or may not be flawed, but I don't see to what purpose.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Vote Compass itself is circular logic. It points out the logical fallicy that that theoretically someone who "Strongly agrees" with every question ends up in the same party tent as someone who 'Strongly Disagrees' with those same questions. Does not compute.

As explained previously, that's not a logical error unless all the positions are left wing or right wing. Since they are a mix, agreeing or disagreeing with all of them will place you in the middle, and thus it will give you the centrist party.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by SebC

As explained previously, that's not a logical error unless all the positions are left wing or right wing. Since they are a mix, agreeing or disagreeing with all of them will place you in the middle, and thus it will give you the centrist party.

Sure, if logic as defined by assuming these things are correctly bucketed in terms of right wing and left wing. The problem is these questions aren't black and white. The problem lies in defining complex statements as equal positions in meaning along a scale. For example you could believe that a carbon tax should be implemented, but also believe that Alberta's Oil Sands environmental damage is exaggerated and because you contradict the 'left-wing/ right-wing' dichotomy it comes up Liberal when in fact you really lie equally between the two parties positions on said issues.

[jammies]

The idea that the Liberals and Conservatives are way apart on the economic scale of that graph is plain wrong. The Libs should be over on the right with the Cons, or the Cons should be in the centre with the Libs - whatever.

[SebC]

What's going on here... the parties move around?

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Originally Posted by J pold

[transplant99]

This "mechanism" is coming under further scrutiny.

Some well-known Conservatives, though, say the test is pegging them as Liberals. Guy Giorno, the Conservative campaign chairman and former chief of staff to Prime Minister Harper announced his Liberal leanings on Twitter.

"Even I took Vote Compass test and got Liberal," Giorno tweeted

While Vote Compass puts the Liberals in the centre, it puts the Conservatives in the bottom right quadrant of their political graph, painting the party as both social and fiscal conservatives. University of Calgary political science professor Barry Cooper said that's not where the Conservatives belong.

"They are extremely centrist," said Cooper. "They are about as centrist as you can get."

Cooper points to the Harper government's deficit spending and lack of movement on social issues to show that they are not overly fiscally or socially conservative.

"About the only thing that the Harper government has done that would be unequivocally supported by small-c conservatives is supported the Canadian military," said Cooper.

http://www.calgarysun.com/news/decis.../17815011.html

[kirant]

Originally Posted by SebC

What's going on here... the parties move around?

One of them removed some topics under the "important/non important" feature.

[CaptainCrunch]

Where's the marxist party and the yogic flyers?