I have to admit that I've been pretty ignorant about the various presidential candidates, let alone their political positions.
But then I came across this online quiz! The quiz allows you to choose the candidate with the most similar beliefs to your own and it's great because it gives blurbs about each candidate's stance on 25 different issues.
Yes, taking the whole thing (and reading all the blurbs) takes a long time but you can skip to the end at any time.
You can check it out at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/candidatequiz/
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9 comments:
So I tried taking the quiz but like Erica said it was really long (I think if I had actually read the full length of the platform stances, the quiz would have taken over an hour, ekk). While the quiz was good in that it had very in depth descriptions of all the platforms of the candidates, the questions required a lot of political knowledge, and I had trouble picking the right answer that suited my views. The candidates with the most similar beliefs to my own were Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani (same amount of points). I definitely don’t know enough on any of the presidential candidates to vote for any of them, but I don’t think I would base my vote on the outcome of this quiz.
I'm usually skeptical of these types of things, because I don't think a simple quiz can really reflect who you most agree with. It often oversimplifies stuff or doesn't take some things into account. This particular quiz seems pretty comprehensive at first glance(it has a lot of questions). But I'm still wary of these types of things.
So many of the questions have each candidate giving basically the same answer. I'd rather know which candidate said what than have this in the format of a quiz to decide who you support for the presidency.
I took the quiz and the results show I have beliefs most like Joe Biden. I have heard of him, but not recently because he's not one of the top runners so the media doesn't cover him as much. But, I thought the quiz was pretty good, and I did think the quiz was kind of long. I had to read the full long answer instead of the one liner. I learned a lot about the policies out there. However, I think a major flaw of this quiz is how people don't know or care about the issues. I didn't know much about social security, so I didn't feel I could answer those questions well. But, it was interesting to see whose views I share and what the candidates think. It was a good insight to the candidates' platforms.
I did the republican edition and got about the same amount of points for every candidate. I guess thats why Republicans are having such a hard time deciding their candidates: they're similar in a lot of ways. I think charisma will be a big factor for voters. For the test itself, I don't think its a flaw that people might not know all the issues; just say the issue isn't important to you when it asks.
I don't know where everyone is today but what about Benazir Bhutto? That's a big piece of news that we can definitely discuss...like how she sent something to Mark Siegel, a US ambassador, blaming Musharraf for her assassination?
I agree with Elaina. When I was listening to the radio this morning, all I heard was about Bhutto's assassination. I waited for a blog about it, considering how huge this is, but a blog never came.
But in answer to Elaina's comment, Bhutto had sent an email to the U.S. advisor about 2 months ago saying that if she was killed, she would blame Musharraf. Also, she stated that Musharaf has made her feel insecure because of his minions (CNN article).
This, I feel, is quite eerie because she obviously felt threatened and her predictions ended up coming true. However, it was quite admirable of her to continue her campaign despite the constant fear of being killed.
This event will also have many repercussions. There was already loads of violence in the country and the worst is probably yet to come. I heard on the news that the attack was well planned: once the sniper shot Bhutto, a suicide bomber blew up, killing many others. Her death will cause much tension in fragile Pakistan. Many people have already been speculating whether it was Musharraf, Al Queda, or other terrorist organizations that planned the attack.
Uh, about the quiz...
I agree w/ Justin. A lot of the answers were really similar, so I felt torn between almost every another. I don't know how much this affects the results.
I also noticed that the answers seemed like speeches from the candidates too.
The quiz answers were either based on speeches or they were answers that the Washington Post obtained after submitting issue questions to each candidate.
I wasn't advocating this quiz as a way to find out who you should absolutely vote for because I agree that many of the answers are similar. Like Ziva said, it's just insight to the candidate's platforms.
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