The Political Compass

BD pointed to the Political Compass test again, so I thought I’d re-take it and see how I was doing.  The Political Compass graphs out socio-political philosophies along two axes, rather than the traditional Left/Right.

My current score is

Economic Left/Right: -3.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.00

I.e., I am more on the Economic Left than Right (more Collectivist/Communist than Neo-Liberal/Libertarian), and significantly more on the Libertarian (Anarchic) aide of things than Authoritarian (Fascist) when it comes to personal liberties.  I’d be on the “Libertarian Left,”

Looking at the US Primaries, that puts me way out of sync with all the candidates except Dennis Kucinich (ick), which might explain why I’m not happy with most of the choices, or may indicate the test isn’t all that accurate.  (Or it may indicate that candidates tend to pander a bit to the populace, which I suspect is much less social libertarian than I am, and to big business contributors, who would be more inclined toward economic neo-liberalism.)

But is it consistent?  Here are the other times I’ve taken it:

Dec. 2001:  -1.13, -3.13
May 2003: -2.13, -3.54
Aug. 2004: -0.75, -3.13
Jul. 2007: -3.00, -4.00

Well, I’m definitely in the fairly-social-libertarian side of things, and waver a bit on economics, but remain somewhat on the left (which still doesn’t feel quite right, so to speak). 

Is the test “accurate,” whatever that means?  There were more than a few questions where I dug into the nuances of the exact wording probably beyond where it made sense, so there’s some room for doubt.  Guess I’ll check back in a couple of years and see …