The Applied Political Compass

Welcome to the Applied Political Compass!

This site invites you to take a test full of politically relevant questions in order to see where you lie on the political spectrum. The test on this site is based on the one from the original Political Compass site. The scoring details for this test, however, are public knowledge.

If you use the "Sign In" link at the top of each page before taking the test, your result will be saved in a database with everybody else's. You can take the test multiple times and view a history of your results to see if your position has shifted on either spectrum over time. You can even edit your profile to affiliate yourself with a specific political party and see where your party lies in relation to others. Please read the Privacy Policy before signing in.

About the Test

When you take the test, the site will calculate your position as a value between -10.0 and +10.0 on two political spectra: Economic and Social. In general terms, the Economic spectrum ranges from an extremely regulated economy (-10.0) to an extremely unregulated, "free-trade" economy (+10.0). The Social spectrum ranges from favoring strongly empowering individual people (-10.0) to favoring strongly empowering the government (+10.0).

For reference, in the United States, roughly speaking, the upper-right corner is Republican Party territory, lower-right is Libertarian Party, lower-left is Green Party, and upper-left is Socialist Party. The Democratic Party falls roughly in the center, but with a tendency to drift up and to the right. Remember that these positions are all relative; it's more about the difference between your position and another's than each person's exact positions.

Other Information

Once more people have signed in and taken the test, I'll start analyzing the data to see if I can pick out any interesting trends. Such analysis will go in the blog.

Finally, you might notice that the test does not let you answer "I don't know" or leave a question blank. This concept came over from the original test. There, it was explained as a way to force people to think about positions they hadn't really thought about before. "I don't know" and "No answer" might become options in the future, if demand warrants.

Have fun!