Someone at work turned me on to an interesting site - Glass Booth. On the site you first put points against the issues that are most important to you, and then you take a quiz to gauge your stance on those points. Following the quiz, you are shown which candidates for the 2008 election best fit your beliefs. If you find that you don't know who to vote for, this might be just the thing to point you in the right direction. I am a solid supporter of Barack Obama in the 2008 election, but I was surprised to see that there were other candidates that match my interests even more closely. According to the results, Mike Gravel was my top match, with Dennis Kucinich second and Barack Obama third. I went through the list of issues as compared on the site to see where I best fit and conflicted with each candidate. It was very interesting reading. I don't have much faith that either Gravel or Kucinich are going to win the primary, so I'm still going with Obama in 2008. It was nice to see that what I had read and learned of the candidates matched up quite well with this blind test.
3 comments:
Dude,
I am so glad to hear your support for Barack. I have been solidly behind him for some time as well. In fact I have donated to his campaign and this is the first time I have ever donated money to a political campaign. I am for Barack not necessarily because I agree with him 100% on all issues but because I believe he can unite the country and we seriously need someone who can do that.
That said, Mike Gravel matched me more strongly as well and Barack was tied with Hillary for 3rd, behind Edwards. All of them are fairly close to my opinions because they all pretty much are the same. Personality is the main difference and there is no way I can vote for Hillary. I have never liked her and never will vote for her in any race.
This Glassbooth survey seems pretty critically flawed.
I got Gavel (65%), Huckabee(64%), Obama(62%).
Typically I score as a McCainite so I checked to see why I was different in this survey.
One big one was environmental policy:
"I strongly support international treaties to cut greenhouse gas emissions like the Kyoto Protocol"
I said I was strongly in support of such a treaty, but that McCain was opposed. Here's the trick:
According to Glassbooth McCain didn't support Kyoto because it let China pollute as much as it wants. Now, China is the biggest polluter in the world: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10276549
In short, McCain and I are on roughly the same page but this survey misses important nuances.
I don't trust these issue based survey methods. Typically every issue is a Gordian Knot that must be solved creatively but the surveys force you into one of two boxes that you know is wrong.
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BTW: I just got married.
Congratulations Sam!
I totally agree that it is difficult to boil down a difficult issue to a Yes / No answer and expect for all of the nuance to shuffle out. The no child left behind topic is a great example too.
Regardless of what the survey says, I think it is very effective in promoting the purpose of the site - to get folks interested and involved in the election process. The survey is a throw away, the important part is for folks who haven't really evaluated the issues to do as you did: to investigate the issues further and see what the candidates have said on the topic. For that, I applaud Glass Booth.
Of course, being mis-informed can be more dangerous than uninformed, but at least the ball is rolling.
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