About Us

We at Map My Politics developed our quiz with the sole intent of helping people to better understand their own political opinions and ideologies.

That’s why we don’t charge a fee for the quiz or clutter the site with intrusive banner ads. (There is a donation button available after you take the quiz, but it’s entirely optional.) And we’re not affiliated with any political party, so you don’t need to wonder if we plan to use quiz data to help some party craft their candidates’ messages in order to get elected.

We belief the power of web-based technology should be put to positive use. Quite simply, our agenda is the betterment of democracy and, ultimately, human civilization. That might sound overly ambitious, but we take as our inspiration the supremely ambitious words of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution explaining its purpose:

... in Order to form a more perfect Union ...

We had the notion – hopefully not too far-fetched! – that if we could help voters to more perfectly identify and understand their ideologies, then maybe they – and, ultimately, their elected representatives – might more perfectly clarify their differences and find areas of common ground.

We take it as an article of faith that a democracy, for better or worse, requires a diversity of ideological opinions. This necessarily means that if a legitimate (i.e. lawful) political viewpoint is sincerely held, after consideration of the relevant facts and issues, then it can’t be labelled as “wrong.” However, it can – and should – be subject to closer analysis and comparison.

Does this mean those on our team don’t have our own beliefs and ideologies? Of course not! But even we don’t always agree.

Our dual aim is to have the Map My Politics quiz:
(1) accurately reflect a user’s political ideology, and
(2) correctly illustrate the competing ideologies so that it is readily apparent how they diverge and where they connect.

Our Approach

Map My Politics provides users with a non-partisan, anonymous and confidential online quiz that maps their political ideology based on a two-axis grid of economic freedom and personal (or social) freedom.

Our quiz places each user not just on the two-axis grid, but also in one of the six core political ideologies, seven other semi-mainstream ideologies, or six more quasi-democratic or “fringe” ideologies. As a bonus, we’ll also deliver your results on several additional dimensions, like relative military hawkishness or environmentally protective. These don’t align neatly on the two-axis grid, although they may correlate with a particular ideology.

We are the first and – to date – only website to provide such a sophisticated analysis. To be clear, we are not the first to improve upon the basic left-right political spectrum that most people think of when referring to liberals (on the left), conservatives (on the right) and centrists (in the middle). That continuum of relative economic freedom (or, if you prefer, government involvement in a market economy) is fine as far as it goes, but it is wholly inadequate in sorting for ideology on other political issues, such as government regulation of abortions, recreational drug use or free speech. And since politics involves way more than just economics, the left-right spectrum is woefully lacking as an identifier of overall political ideology.

At the moment, our quiz is oriented towards American politics. But stay tuned as we develop versions for other countries. The specific political issues may vary from nation to nation, as do the names of the political parties and the particular form of democracy, but the underlying ideologies upon which our test is based are universal.