Choosing A Candidate Thread - The Test

[brian_igo]

Found this tonight. Anyone who remembers the online tests from 2004 is going to be surprised at how far they've come.

This is a great site because you pick as many important topics as you want, then sort through three pages of direct quotes from the candidates, clicking the statements you agree with. At the end you not only see which candidates most closely matched your views, but on which questions. This is a terrific political tool and I hope it grows through the campaign season.

My results were a little surprising. I had a two-way tie for first and third, and the guy I like second best finished fifth. Here's my rundown

Obama (tie first - 14 agreed statements)
Clinton (tie first - 14 agreed statements)
Biden (tie third - 12 agreed statements)
Richardson (tie third - 12 agreed statements)
Edwards (11 agreed statements)
Dodd (tie sixth - 9 agreed statements)
Kucinich (tie sixth - 9 agreed statements)
Gravel (7 agreed statements)
McCain (6 agreed statements)
Huckabee (tie ninth - 5 agreed statements)
Paul (tie ninth - 5 agreed statements)
Romney (2 agreed statements)
Brownback (tie twelfth - 3 agreed statements)
Tancredo (tie twelfth - 3 agreed statements)
Fred Thompson (2 agreed statements)
Hunter (tie fifteenth - 1 agreed statement)
Giuliani (tie fifteenth - 1 agreed statement)

[magenta321]

Paul 8
Clinton 6
Edwards 5
Obama 5
Trancredo 5
Dodd 4
Richardson 4
Biden 3
Gravel 3
Kucinich 3
Brownback 2
Huckabee 2
McCain 2
Romney 2
Thompson 2
Giuliani 1

I need to learn more about Paul. I'm technically a registered Republican, but I've grown so far from the party that (so far) I wasn't even considering any Republicans for this election. I found myself agreeing with Paul on the Iraq war, but I'd like to learn more about him and see if I think he's sincere, or just seperating himself from Bush so people like me will consider voting for him.

I'm sad that Obama didn't fare much better in this test than Dodd, but my results are limited to the 4 issues I chose. I'd like to take on more issues when I have more time.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

I ended up with no clear majority (4 for Clinton, 3 for Dodd, 3 for Edwards). I even ended up agreeing with Giuliani, but who wouldn't agree with the statement "I'd like to see government improve its efficiency every year"?

[eris esoteric]

Huh. Don't see "limiting the powers of the executive branch and reestablishing proper checks and balances in the national goverment" as a "topic." And I'm sorry, but until that BECOMES a topic, I'm not really gonna be willing to hear another word about what any of them have to say about anything else.

[jgibson2[$]]

It's very interesting, but I'm not finding any surprises. None of the electable candidates matches my world view. I'd also like to see them add Eris's topic.

[pippadaisy[$]]

I goofed it the first time through (not enough caffeine to parse instructions) so am bookmarking for later.

[jgibson2[$]]

I like that you can go back and add topics, so you're not committed to slogging through the whole thing at once.

[brian_igo]

eris esoteric said

Huh. Don't see "limiting the powers of the executive branch and reestablishing proper checks and balances in the national goverment" as a "topic." And I'm sorry, but until that BECOMES a topic, I'm not really gonna be willing to hear another word about what any of them have to say about anything else.

jgibson2 said

It's very interesting, but I'm not finding any surprises. None of the electable candidates matches my world view. I'd also like to see them add Eris's topic.

I like a couple of candidates, but I don't trust any of them to voluntarily give back the power claimed by Bush.

That is going to be a job for Congress. It has to be codified so even if my guy (or yours) is so great that he does refute what Bush has done, no future president (say, Prescott Bush III) can come back and revive them.

If you don't want any president to do what Bush has done, you have to make what he did a crime and create investigation and enforcement procedures that will apply to all future presidents.

[jgibson2[$]]

In order to make those changes, we need to convince generations of voters - and not just the younger ones - that they need to read and understand the Constitution. Beyond that, we need to convince more than a few of them that it's more important than their wallet or their perceived safety.

[phoenixx]

My results:

Hillary Clinton came up as my number one match, with 16 questions in common, in spite of my deep seated thoughts that electing her may divide the country rather than help it.
Ron Paul, the candidate I support, came in second with 15 questions in common.
With a significant drop in commonality, Mike Gravel was third, with 9 questions in common.
Barack Obama was fourth with 8 questions in common.
Edwards and Brownback tied for fifth, with 4 questions each in common.
The remaining candidates (Guiliani, Romney, Kucinich, etc) did not even register on the radar.

[frazzledspice]

Oh, it was so long....I started only looking at the first pages in each category, but I don't know if that skewed things.

My top choices were:

Christopher Dodd 12
Bill Richardson 8
John Edwards 7
Dennis Kucinich 6
Barack Obama 6
Joe Biden, Mike Gravel, and John McCain 5
Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, Tom Tancredo, and Duncan Hunter 3
Sam Brownback and Mitt Romney 2
Ron Paul 1

I never thought much about Christopher Dodd until today (I did like his grey hair commercial on You-Tube.)

I do like Richardson.

McCain is my favorite among the Republicans.

[wivabef]

I'm all over the place!

I chose to review two topics: the environment and energy, and the taxes and spending (those are the two most important from the homefront status... I can not begin to even fathom how to consider global needs, and the options did not allow me to discuss Africa and South America.)

Dodd, McCain, Romney, 4 each

Clinton, Edwards, Huckabee, hunter, Paul, Tancredo 3 each

The rest were either 2 or 1.

Dodd were all from the environment questions... so I guess, if I shook up a Romney McCain Dodd cocktail, like would be pretty randy for me!

[lynnzop[$]]

Okay, I did it but only chose two topics. I'd like to declare a "do over" though when I have more time to chose more topics to compare.

This stuck right out at me.

181 days left until the Iowa Caucus

Ugh. I can't believe we are discussing this stuff already.

[brian_igo]

I think the more topics you choose, the better the results. If you only pick one or two it can take you to some weird conclusions.

(And thus illustrates the danger of being a single-issue voter...)

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

I'm miffed. I registered with them yesterday and when I go to log in again, it doesn't find my profile. After doing like 7 surveys!!!

[hadassahchana[$]]

How did you guys get such low numbers? Mine are all in the 20s and 30s. Ok, except for Kucinich, and I apparently agreed with him on 9 statements. Other than that, it's nearly a tie neck and neck with:

Romney
Huckabee
McCain
Edwards (!)
Obama
Clinton
Dodd

Giuliani is the point where the statements I agreed with fall off, with Kucinich bringing up the rear of that part of the parade.

In other words, I still don't have a candidate to vote for.

[theworm[$]]

The test is stressing me out!

I started doing the entire thing and I was reading and overthinking and agreeing and then (prepare for even longer run-on-sentence) thinking about context and then rethinking and then deciding that I only had to agree with a couple and then getting tired and saying I'll stop now and then going back and doing just a category and then wondering why it said I matched with Biden, and then doing just 2 categories and asking who the heck is Mike Gravel because I don't even know who he is and why I agree with him so much.

I really overthink these.

[hadassahchana[$]]

I know what you mean. It took me almost two hours to get through the questions, and now I feel really stupid for not knowing who some of the candidates are. I have a headache.

[theworm[$]]

I'm afraid to start again! And then there are some topics that I don't know well enough to know what I should agree with. I suppose I should just pick the 6 topics that are most important to me, but I'm really scared at this point!

[hadassahchana[$]]

I tried to pick just a couple, but they're all important to me. The issues matter a lot, the candidates don't to me this time round. I haven't ever been so apathetic about an election.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

I've been doing one or two sections every few days and will probably revisit sections as the Presnit elections come closer. Surprisingly, I find so far my top five are (in this order):
Dennis Kucinich
Barak Obama
Bill Richardson
Christopher Dodd
Hillary Clinton

I'm not done with all the surveys, and the statements are truly mere soundbites that don't speak to details of a candidate's policy, but it's giving me some curiosity about canidates I hadn't delved deeply into before now. Interesting.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Anyone know if the site has been updating the candidates' statements? I'm not sure that their stands have remained unchanged from when the site first put things up and it would be interesting to see how that changes things.

BTW, I'm surprised to see that, based on what I filled out before, I agree with Obama on 41 statements and McCain for 26; I would have thought the difference would have been greater.